Students Ask, Shall We Dance?

By Stacia Friedman

Is this a debutante party in the Hamptons or a soiree in Palm Beach? No, it's the semi-annual formal of Penn's Ballroom Dance Society in Houston Hall Nov. 15. The tumultuous applause isn't for professional dancers. It's for nursing school sophomore Monica Lee and William Sherman, a physics Ph.D. candidate in his seventh year at Penn.

She's studying at Wharton. And he studies chemical engineering part time. But Ballroom Dance Society President Tara Fallon and Joe Gionfriddo study dance for fun.

"It's my only outlet from my work," said Sherman who formerly served as club president and is now team captain, responsible for organizing practice sessions for members who wish to participate in intercollegiate dance competitions. Sherman's interest in ballroom dancing started when he was a sophomore at Brown and he is now ranked on the Silver Level. "Working your way through grad school, you don't really have time to be a Gold Level dancer, which is like a black belt in karate."

Fortunately, you don't have to own a sequined vest or know how to mambo to join the Ballroom Dance Society and participate in competitions. The Youth College Network of the United States of America Ballroom Dance Association (USABDA) organizes intercollegiate competitions designed to appeal to newcomers.

"They intentionally structure events so it's very easy for someone to come in, take lessons for a few weeks and start going to competitions," said Sherman. "You can go and see really good dancers, see the costumes and polished performances. It's much more inspiring than just going to practice sessions."

Current club president, Wharton junior Tara Fallon agreed. "Dance competitions offer a great avenue to learn more very quickly." She was equally enthusiastic about the social aspects. "It's usually a weekend event where you stay in the dorm of the college hosting the competition. You meet students from Princeton, Rutgers, New York, Boston."

Fallon said that not everyone is suited to competition where the emphasis is on technique. "The club constantly struggles between the interests of the competitors and the social dancers," she said. "Our main challenge is to make people feel comfortable when they come to take the first step."

This courageous first step is often in response to Freshman Performing Arts Night where neophytes like Wharton freshmen David Jacoby and Jennifer Jong got their first glimpse of ballroom dancing last September. Along with 180 others, Jacoby and Jong attended the club's opening event. After an introduction to the basics, they are looking forward to their first competition in Ohio. "We're entering in the Newcomer Level, performing the waltz, quickstep, rumba, jive and cha-cha," said Jacoby.

Although the club's more competitive dancers create a sensation when they take to the floor, they represent a small, minority of the membership, which boasts a mailing list of 500 and a core group of 70 "very active" members. Most are there to take a break from studies and have a good time. After all, watching a rerun of "Seinfeld" isn't as interesting as holding a member of the opposite sex in your arms on a regular basis.

While half the club's members are undergraduates and 30 percent are grad students, the remainder are a mix of faculty, students from other colleges and people from the dance community at large. On a recent Wednesday night open dance session, Alison Cook-Sather, director of education at Bryn Mawr, was brushing up on her quickstep. "I completed my Ph.D. at Penn in '96, but I come back for the dancing," she said.

But what about the awkwardness of asking a complete stranger to dance? Especially one who might be more experienced when it comes to executing a sultry tango? At Penn's Ballroom Dance Club, that's the whole idea - to put beginners in contact with more advanced dancers and let nature take its course.

An effective way to achieve this is a dance game called Jack 'n Jill. Females scribble their names on scraps of paper dropped into a bowl. The guys line up and, one by one, discover who their partner will be. The music is usually something easy such as swing, the first dance they learned in September.

At the formal gala when Tara Fallon announced a Jack 'n Jill, Wharton freshman Ariel Glassner took his place in line. Fallon called out his partner's name over the microphone, "Allegra Brown?"

Brown, a second year law student at Temple, greeted Glassner with a smile and a warning. "I don't know how to do this, but I'm willing to try." Stealing a break from her studies, this was Brown's first exposure to ballroom dancing.

The overwhelming success of the club belongs to the efforts of its former president, Kim-Anh Nguyen, who is completing her 8th year of an M.D.-Ph.D. program in immunology at the medical school. Nguyen started taking ballroom dance lessons while she was an undergrad at Harvard. "When I came to Penn in '91, I was disappointed in the dance program. It was run by an outside instructor and the students had no control."

After being elected president, Nguyen restructured the organization. "I did all the teaching in the beginning and then networked with area dance studios. They needed younger students and we needed good instructors."

Penn's Ballroom Dance Society now offers lessons by outstanding professional instructors every Sunday, from noon to 4 p.m., at English House in the Class of '38 Lounge. Instruction is given at all levels and the last hour is taught by advanced students. Dues-$20 for students and $30 for non-students per semester-include lessons on Sunday and open dances on Wednesday evening. More information is on the Web at http://dolphin.upenn.edu/~ballroom/.