With sweaty palms, pants two inches too short, and brown shoes to accompany my otherwise pitch-black ensemble, I strolled out onto the dance floor.
I stood motionless with my partner, Christine Dryden (SFS ‘12), as dozens of couples that had been practicing the rumba for at least a semester’s time looked on. Judges skirted the perimeter of the floor, inspecting the numbered couples and waiting for the music to start so that they could begin to weed out the weak ones.
The music began, a quick four/four. Dryden counted the beats aloud for me through her broad smile as she led me through the steps I had learned a little over an hour ago.
How did I get here? A mere 24 hours ago I had become an honorary member of the Georgetown University Ballroom Dance team. But hell, three weeks before that day they weren’t even in my periphery.
My own lack of awareness is symptomatic of a group for whom visibility is a problem. Like other sports teams, GUBDT’s main focus is competition and preparation. At the same time, it’s not the kind of sport that most people played in high school, and, with most competitions taking place out of state, it’s not particularly easy to watch the team perform.
To interact with the Georgetown community, the team, which was founded in 1995, has historically offered social classes-hence you might have heard “Thank Heaven for Little Girls,” an excellent foxtrot, as it turns out, blaring in Hoya Court on Thursday nights. Last year, under the guidance of then-president Kelly Newman (COL ’10), the team premiered the Masquerade Ball, a formal dance event open to all Georgetown students.
“It’s basically a social dance,” GUBDT President Samatha Perez (COL’10) said, describing the group’s outreach to the Georgetown community. “It’s a reason for us to dress up and dance.”
There would be a lot of costumed cavorting at the Clover Star Classic (the competition I would soon be watching and, unbeknownst to me, competing in) on UPenn’s campus, for which we left at a relatively inopportune 4:30 p.m. on Friday in order to hit all the traffic we could on the way to our Howard Johnson in south Jersey.
For all but half an hour of the six-hour trip, the backseat conversation centered on one thing: ballroom dance. That’s not to say I was ever bored-I learned how a competition like Clover would be organized; I learned all kinds of juicy gossip about GUBDT; and I learned which dances to do to pretty much every song that came up on the radio. (For what it’s worth, Shania Twain’s “You’re Still the One” is a rumba, and “I’m Yours” by Jason Mraz is a foxtrot).
While you’d be wrong to assume that members of the GU Ballroom Dance Team have no time for other passions in their lives-I met members of the College Democrats and Republicans, GERMS, and Nomadic Theater, to name a few-there’s no question that being a part of the team is a commitment.
“Officially, it’s called ‘Dancesport,'” clarified Treasurer Eugene Brodach (MSB ‘12). Indeed, the time commitment and competitive drive that comes with the sport lands it somewhere between a casual dance/performance club a la Ritmo y Sabor and a high-intensity athletic squad.
Although the team’s coach, dance instructor Dan Calloway, only comes to campus for the team’s Wednesday night practices in Copley Formal lounge, all of GUBDT’s members spend time practicing together and on their own throughout the week.
“The students are very self-motivated-it’s rare to find that on a college campus,” Calloway, who runs a dance studio in Bethesda and also works with the University of Maryland ballroom team, said.
During their Monday and Thursday night practices in Yates dance room, this self-dedication permeates the team’s routines. The older and more advanced dancers spend as much time guiding newcomers as they do practicing their own steps.
As I sat on the side during one of the team’s practices, I was impressed by how easily team members gave-and accepted-criticism from their peers. Although the best dancers stood on their own, dancing complex routines to nonexistent music, the rest of the team traded partners and critiques like innocuous chitchat.
“It’s just the way things work,” said Secretary Anthony Hurtado (MSB’12), who is a newer member of the team. “It’s the job of the older dancers to help out the younger ones. It’s the cycle of life.”
Perez agrees. “It’s nice to see your teammates get callbacks,” she said, referring to the term for a couple that places high enough in a heat of competition to get another attempt to impress the judges.
I had heard a lot about that collegial affection on our way to Mount Laurel, site of New Jersey’s finest accommodations, but when we pulled in at 10:30 p.m., the night was far from over. Despite our scheduled 8:00 a.m. departure for the venue on UPenn’s campus, none would miss out on this chance to socialize.
The team had booked a block of hotel rooms, and before long, the one in the middle pulsated with music and ballroom dancers hanging loose. As the night progressed and the only dancing being done belonged far from the ballroom floor, my constant response of “I don’t dance, I write” was met with dropped jaws. I assumed they hadn’t read The Perks of Being a Wallflower.
Despite the late night revelry, the team was surprisingly punctual the next morning, as the horde of fully costumed dancers filled the lobby at 8:00 a.m. sharp.
And costumed they were: the team members were nearly unrecognizable in brightly sequined dresses with their hair arranged in elaborate buns.
“You do what it takes to get attention,” GU grad student Pamela Martey explained, whose dress sported a purple bow crafted out of a BookSox.
The men’s costumes were less about catching attention and more about looking sleek-gelled back hair and suit/tie/vest combos were on the ticket, with some studs suited up for their Latin dances in black v-neck dress shirts.
With the cost of official ballroom costumes running as high as $1,500 for those competing in the highest echelons of the sport, some find interesting ways to go easy on their wallets. Martey’s partner, Josh Sabran, who practices and competes with the team as a member of the D.C. community, found his Latin shirts in the women’s section of Express.
We arrived at the competition over an hour early, and as we entered the ballroom, located on the top floor of an office building in West Philadelphia, I had only one thought: prom. The gaudy costumes, crowded dance-floor, and cookie-cutter chandeliers took me straight back to senior year of high school.
“This is American dance,” explained Hurtado, referring to the already throbbing dancefloor filled with waltzing couples. “We don’t compete in that area.”
Ballroom dance is broken into two major categories, American and International. GUBDT only competes in the International category, which splits into Standard and Latin divisions.
Standard is the more “traditional” form of Ballroom dance: the steps are more formal and stream-lined. “I think of Standard as [being] like Disney Princess dances,” Perez said. “It’s very graceful and elegant, ‘grown-up dancing.'” Included in Standard are dances near and dear to fuddy-duddys the world over, such as the Foxtrot, Quickstep, Waltz (Viennese and regular), and Tango.
Latin, on the other hand, encompasses the “fun and sexy” dances, as Perez put it. Women’s costumes for Latin dances reflect this looser feeling. Instead of full-length dresses (as seen in Standard dance)-dancers often wear two piece outfits with skirts that barely make it mid-thigh. Sequins aren’t what catch the judges’ attention here.
As the dancers changed into their Latin outfits, it was decided that I would fill in for a sick team member, doing the Rumba and the Cha Cha (other Latin dances: the Samba, Pasadoble, and Jive). I hesitated, pointing out that I had only packed blue jeans and a grey sweater. Not to mention that I had only just learned the basic steps.
As some of the younger members of the team scrambled to locate some black pants and an unflattering low-cut shirt, I went over the most basic steps of the routines with Dryden. We danced under the tutelage of advanced Latin dancer Jeff Bolling (COL ’10), who looked to exploit the fact that judges only give each couple about five seconds of their attention in the crowded newcomer class.
“At this level, they’re just looking to make sure that you know what you’re doing,” Bolling explained. “Just keep smiling and don’t look at your feet too much.”
Bolling competes at the “pre-champ” level (the scale goes from “newcomer” through the precious metals-bronze, silver, gold-and then to pre-champ and finally champ) with his partner and girlfriend Holly Palmer (COL ‘09), one of the most talented-and focused-pairs.
They are certainly not the only couple on the Ballroom team, where “clubcest” is the norm-at one point a GUBDT hook-up chart was proposed, but according to the team there wasn’t enough paper.
The line between dance and romantic partner is anything but clear; according to Dyden, “partnerships are creepily like relationships.”
Team Captain Kelsey Cruise (COL ’10) further blurs this line: “you may not be able to withhold sex from your dance partner, but you can withhold dancing.” Understandably, then, changing partners entails no small amount of drama.
“People’s feelings get hurt,” Perez admitted.
This is due in no small part to the overwhelmingly female make-up of club (16 out of the club’s 38 members are male), and the constant demand for strong male dancers. A number of the more advanced female dancers partner with GU alums, graduate students, and members of the greater D.C. community (none of whom are officially part of the team as far as SAC funding is concerned) who are prepared to compete at their level.
The stratification of skill levels makes for a stratified social group as well.
At the highest skill levels, there are dancers who compete simply for a love of the sport and are socially much less involved in the group. The few team members who missed out on the Friday night party were competing at the pre-champ level.
At the opposite end of the spectrum are the newcomers, who mix well with each other but seem to realize their position as intrinsically beneath the more experienced dancers. An increase in skill often comes with acceptance by those higher up on the ballroom food chain, however. It is those that strike a balance between competitive seriousness and social enthusiasm that seem to form the team’s backbone.
“There’s no stereotypical ballroomer,” said Hurtado, when asked about the team’s make-up. Some come in having danced in high school, others have no experience until they go to their first practice, but it doesn’t take long for all of them to come together over a love for Ballroom.
In what I thought would be a brief final interview with Perez, she outlasted my recorder’s battery life by a good 15 minutes, talking about all aspects of ballroom dance. This sort of excitement encapsulates the spirit of GUBDT. Talk to anyone on the team and their passion for Ballroom bubbles readily to the surface.
This excitement was most obvious at the competition when the pre-champ and champ competitors performed, dancing their “open syllabus” routines, during which competitors dance on a more sparsely populated dance floor, which allows for more exciting movement and less bumping.
“Certain dances, you can’t do a lot with them at the lower level,” Hurtado, who performs in the newcomer class said. Perform too advanced of a move, and risk being “invigilated”-dancesport-ese for dancing too fancy.
I didn’t have to worry about being invigilated in my brief stint as a ballroom dancer either-my play-it-safe approach kept anyone from thinking I was being too fancy.
While those around me performed serpientes, cucarachas, and other impressively-titled moves, I kept it simple with “hand-to-hands,” basic front and back steps, and a broad smile.
As I walked off the dancefloor, perspiration clinging to my too-tight shirt and heart pounding, I couldn’t help but smile. I had just danced a minute and a half of rumba and not run into a single person. Not bad for a writer.
