Ballroom bliss

So you think you can’t dance? Well, you’re not alone, but your numbers are getting smaller. Americans have rediscovered the pleasures of gliding around the floor in the arms of a partner. As a result, interest in ballroom dancing is greater than it has been at any time since the middle of the last century, dance professionals say.

The reasons vary. People are looking for new ways to stay fit, and ballroom is a good way to meet people. But maybe it’s something as simple as the fact that people are tired of dancing by themselves, as Thomas Murdock, vice president of marketing for Arthur Murray International, suggests.

Membership in the United States Amateur Ballroom Dancers Association has jumped from 10,000 to 25,000 in the last six or seven years, says its spokesman, Ken Richards. “We’re seeing younger people coming into studios in droves.”

The youth movement may be because of the growing recognition of competitive ballroom dancing as a sport; dance is even being considered for inclusion in the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing. Or it may be because almost every college and university in the country now has a dance sports club or offers classes.

Wendy Goldstein, a sophomore at the University of Maryland, College Park, always wanted to learn to dance, but lessons in her hometown, St. Louis, were too expensive. When she got to college, she joined the school’s ballroom dance club. In the 10 months since she started, she’s become very serious, practicing five days a week when she’s not studying cell biology and molecular genetics. She and her partner recently won “best newcomer couple” at a competition in North Carolina.

Goldstein loves ballroom dancing, she says, for several reasons. “You don’t see much chivalry anymore, but ballroom is very chivalrous. It’s addictive, because the people are so much fun and the dancing is so much fun. You don’t have to be good at it to have a good time.

“And you get to dress up,” she adds. “That’s one of the most appealing things.”

Not only are more people dancing, they’re watching dancing in record numbers. This summer’s surprise reality hit, “Dancing With the Stars” on ABC, drew 15 million viewers and was the top-rated show for several weeks.

Fox’s entry in the category, “So You Think You Can Dance,” drew more than 10 million viewers for the two-hour July 20 premiere. Contestants for the American Idol-esque title of “best dancer in the country” dance hip-hop, jazz and krumping; but ballroom is also in the mix.

The indie film “Mad Hot Ballroom” has become a respectable hit in limited release this summer. It documents a program that brings trained dance teachers to New York public school kids. Who knows? Ballroom could become as hip as hip-hop. On the horizon is New Line’s dance drama “Take the Lead,” starring Antonio Banderas, which should be out next year.

Ballroom dancing has become an entertainment phenomenon that feeds on itself. Earlier films and television shows such as PBS’s “Championship Ballroom Dancing” got people interested in dance, and dancing got them interested in watching it.

There has always been an ebb and flow in ballroom’s popularity, and things were slow in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s. People went to clubs and shook it to the music, no partner needed. But since the mid-‘90s, Murdock says, there’s been a steady increase in the industry. Two years ago, Arthur Murray’s business was up 7 percent from the year before. Last year, it was up 12 percent, and this year, it’s already up 28 percent.

“Hollywood brought people back to the dance floor,” says Richards, “and back into each other’s arms.”

Movies and TV aside, other factors have fueled the ballroom craze — some that you wouldn’t expect, such as the videotaping of big weddings. Nowadays, couples take lessons so they won’t look like klutzes in their wedding video, and often the whole wedding party will come along if a nervous groom wants company. It’s a significant part of most studios’ business, and some dance teachers, such as Jennifer Gooding of the Annapolis Dance Academy in Annapolis, Md., practically make wedding lessons a subspecialty.

“Ten years ago, my clientele was definitely older,” she says. “Now they literally run the gamut. I’m seeing more dating couples come in. People are starting to see it as a good option (for a date).”

She’s even getting teenagers taking dance lessons — even boys. “What teenage boy doesn’t like girls around him?” she says. “And what teenage boy doesn’t want to be admired for his dancing?”

Younger people are often drawn in because they want to learn Latin dances such as salsa, which are energetic, fun and particularly popular right now. Once they learn one dance, they often want to learn others.

Jennifer Williams, who is 23, talked her boyfriend, Michael Witthauer, into coming to class with her at the Towson Dance Studio in Towson, Md. He wanted to take salsa; she persuaded him to join Wedding Survival, the studio’s beginning ballroom class. They are learning to waltz, swing and foxtrot.

“We’ll probably continue classes,” she says, “because it’s so much fun.”

At the other end of the spectrum are the baby boomers. No trend, of course, goes unaffected by that huge bulge in the population.

“They are maturing,” Richards says. “They are taking cruises and going to more social functions.”

They need to know how to dance with their partner and look good doing it.

Boomers are into fitness and have health concerns. They have discovered that dancing burns calories, gets the heart going and isn’t boring like lifting weights.

Many boomers are nostalgic for another age — a kinder, gentler one when people danced the waltz and foxtrot instead of making moves that look like foreplay for sex.

But there are less theoretical and more practical reasons more people are dancing, the main one being that lessons are available in so many places. And they are cheaper.

Over the years independent dance studios have sprung up. Lessons can be had for nothing or next to nothing at Ys and community centers. People don’t have to commit to expensive packages of dance lessons; they can find a place close to home where they can take a swing class or go to Latin night for a free salsa lesson at a nightclub.

Lee Gedansky of Beginning Ballroom finds his students at places such as the Towson YMCA, the Maryland Athletic Club and the University of Baltimore. On Saturday nights, he gives lessons at the 13th Floor at the Belvedere. He believes the time is right for ballroom dancing because of how Americans live their lives.

“In the last 10 years, there’s been a much greater increase in people who live, eat and breathe their jobs,” he says. “That’s true of a lot of my students. Some of them set aside time for themselves by dancing. It’s not only relaxing, it helps facilitate a certain level of social intimacy you lose with working all the time.”