University Daily Kansan - Thursday, November 13, 2003

5, 6, 7, 8 ...
Dance as a sport is gaining worldwide acceptance

 

The social dance unit of gym class in primary and secondary school probably turned you off. Your adolescent, sweaty hand was forced to touch a member of the opposite sex’s equally damp hand. And then, as if it wasn’t bad enough, you were partnered with your crush. Oh, those butterflies. Nervous, you concentrated on your feet, avoiding any eye contact. You stumbled through your embarrassment, clomping around like a newborn foal, wondering what a square dance had to do with physical education

Now that you’re in college and probably aren’t quite so scared of holding hands, you may discover that ballroom and Latin rhythm dancing can be a fun way to spend a night and are actually a decent workout.

You get in shape quick, says Christina Turk, an extremely energetic Kansas City, Mo., freshman, who has been attending KU Ballroom Dance Club meetings for about a month. “From the sternum on down, I am sore,” says Turk — who seems to enjoy the class of ballroom dancing and impressing her friends — at a Monday practice session in the Hashinger Hall dance studio. Every Monday she discovers she’s sore somewhere after the club’s large Sunday lesson in the Kansas Union Ballroom, which usually lasts more than an hour longer than the 2 p.m. to 4 p.m. schedule would suggest. Turk says she struggles with balance, but she’s learning fast. “I’m a very klutzy person,” she says.

Ballroom dancing is demanding sport, but you don’t need extensive training or a great body to be a good social dancer, says Mallee Morris, a professional dancer from the Champion DanceSport Company, which instructs the club on Sundays. She says most professional dancers have incredible bodies, and that while performing, dancers have the same average heartbeat as middle distance runners. The International Olympic Committee first recognized DanceSport as a legitimate sport in 1997 and the U.S. Amateur Ballroom Dancers Association is working to make it a medal sport by 2008.

While competitive dancing is a recent phenomenon, dancing at its root has been around countless years, says Shelley Ramirez, who teaches at Walter’s Dance Center in Kansas City, Kan. Ballroom dancing emerged in Austria in the 17th century.

The popularity of dancing waxes and wanes, says Bogdan Pathak, a graduate student who teaches ballroom dance courses at The University of Kansas and helps out with the club. In the past decade, swing dance and picked up and dropped off, then came a resurgence in salsa, which is currently at a plateau. He says social dance is at a happy medium now.

Pathak has been a ballroom dancer for six years. “A friend decided I needed a life,” he says of how he discovered dance. Pathak says ballroom relates physically to martial arts, which he had been participating in for years before he started dancing, so it fits his personality. Plus, it’s fun, social and challenging. Pathak now enjoys ballroom dance more than martial arts. Pathak has competed in DanceSport for four years. He has participated in the USABDA Championships and the St. Louis Star Ball, a member of the Dancer’s Cup Circuit and the DanceSport Superbowl Series. Club members also have the opportunity to compete this month in the newcomer level of the National Collegiate DanceSport Championship in Columbus, Ohio.

Thirteen students at the University have expressed interested in competing so far; Gustavo Sudre was not one of them. The Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, sophomore joined the club at the beginning of the semester, but says he’s not in it for the competition. He says he dances for the fun and the exercise.

If you watch ballroom dancing, especially passionate dances such as the rumba and the tango, male dancers come across as intense and masculine. “You are the rock,” says Hanna Franko, the club’s president, explaining to the men at the beginning of a Sunday lesson that they have to be strong and embrace their partners tightly.

In contrast, Sudre and Turk acknowledge that feminine stereotypes about male dancers still exist, which is one of two main reasons men shy away from ballroom dancing. The two also say that their friends don’t think they can ever be good dancers or they have no rhythm.

Morris says these naysayers are wrong; everyone can dance. “Some people are natural dancers, but some great ones really had to work at it,” she says. “I’ve never had a person I couldn’t teach to dance.”