Care to tango? Ballroom dance beats winter blues

YOU know those couples. The ones who, when called upon, can trot out a mean foxtrot, waltz or tango at the rellies’ wedding while you –er – improvise...

They glide across the floor, demonstrating superb synchronicity, smile smugly into each other’s eyes as they execute a tricky manoeuvre the way it’s meant to be done. Well, chances are there’s quite a few of these types happily residing in the Creswick area.

Happily because taking the ballroom dance lessons that local instructors, Elizabeth Howard and Andrew O’Connell dispense each week through Creswick U3A, tends to boost participants’ happiness quotient considerably.

Partners in life as well as in dance, Elizabeth and Andrew have been teaching ballroom dance to the locals here for the past 10 years.

Now, through Creswick U3A, they volunteer their time to hold ballroom dance lessons every Tuesday, for all levels right through from absolute beginners to advanced dancers who can cut up the floor.

And a couple who regularly attend their advanced lessons have recently introduced a monthly social ballroom dance at nearby Clunes. More on that later.

For Elizabeth and Andrew, teaching ballroom dance is something they simply love to do. Both have professional backgrounds as teachers and bring this to their ballroom dance lessons, patiently adapting the pace to match their students’ abilities.

The Tuesday classes through the local U3A take place in the Creswick Town Hall with beginners from 10am, transition from 11.30am, improvers from 1pm and advanced at 3pm.

For the participants the cost of the lessons is covered in their annual Creswick U3A membership which is $25 a year and provides members (aged 50 and over) with a wide range of other classes and activities to participate in as well.

Elizabeth says the focus of their ballroom dance lessons is firmly on having fun and socialising. “It’s a happy-making activity,” she says. “We love it. We teach foxtrot, waltz, tango and quickstep, new vogue sequence and old time dancing.”

The Springmount couple both started dancing fairly late in life but quickly discovered a natural aptitude. Besides teaching the regular lessons through U3A at Creswick they also do occasional private lessons, typically for events like weddings, deb balls and the like.

Clunes’ Graeme Grigson and Ballarat’s Helen Wallis are regulars in Elizabeth and Andrew’s Creswick U3A advanced class. But both had also studio-trained in ballroom dance previously and they recently took the lead in introducing a regular series of social dances to Clunes. These now happen on the first Friday night of the month from 7.30pm-11pm.

Helen says the new Clunes social dance is not just an opportunity for people who like to dance to come together and do just that. It’s also a great way of bringing life, and sometimes a dash of glam, to the “beautiful Clunes Town Hall”.

Graeme is also a member of the Clunes Tourism and Development Association which is supporting the new Clunes series of social dances. Helen says participants bring supper, and any money raised through running the dance goes back into the community.

The new Clunes dance is among multiple social dance opportunities around the region including dances at Ascot, Newstead and Maldon.

It’s true to say that ballroom dance played a vital role in Andrew and Elizabeth getting to know each other.

“I started learning to dance in 2010 and Elizabeth started three years before,” Andrew says. “We didn’t know each other. We actually met through TAFE college in Melbourne.” “When Andrew asked me out, I asked him could he dance, and he said ‘Yes’... and then went straight down to the studio (in Ferntree Gully) to get a lesson,” Elizabeth says.

There are many benefits including coordination, exercising and heightened spatial awareness. “Also with dance you’ve got to think, move your feet, remember the moves, so it’s cognitive in so many ways. It’s fitness and thinking and social all at once," says Elizabeth.

“Many (who take the Creswick U3A lessons) venture out to social dances in the region. There are plenty in Hepburn and Ballarat,” Elizabeth says.

“We put on two dances a year at Daylesford Town Hall. They frock up.”

Frocking up is part of the fun, Helen says, and right now she and other dancers who take Elizabeth and Andrew’s lessons are among the many particularly looking forward to the dance set for Daylesford Town Hall on October 7.

More information about Elizabeth and Andrew’s lessons is available through Creswick U3A or 0402 777 852. More information about the Clunes social dance series is available on 0417 233 373.

Words & image: Eve Lamb