2025, education, Gatherings, Music, Songs, Uncategorized

School Dance

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Our community of 28,000 people has four Catholic churches and a very large parochial school system. The churches were originally started for and attended by the various immigrant groups who settled here. The Germans from Russia and the German Hungarians attended St. Joseph’s Church on the south side (less affluent section) of town by the railroad tracks and stockyards. The more affluent Czech immigrants attended St. Wenceslaus, north of the tracks, and the most affluent attended St. Patrick’s Church in the downtown area. The 1970’s oil boom led to a need for another church, Queen of Peace, built in the area of new houses near the interstate.

The Catholic School system has a big Mardi Gras celebration/fundraiser every your during the first weekend of February, ostensibly close to when Mardi Gras happens, although this year it was way earlier than Mardi Gras since Easter is so late this year. The festivities take place at the Catholic High School, just a block from our house. We have never attended, but I understand that every year it is the same with games of chance, big dinners, cakewalks, and fun activities for children. This year, however, they added something quite surprising-dance lessons.

Local dance teachers came to teach Line dancing and Swing dancing, and most surprising, Salsa dancing. We have a fair number of immigrants from Central and South America, and a group of them started a Salsa dance company that is apparently very popular and booked way out for for engagements. They also perform every December 12 at Queen of Peace in honor of Our Lady of Guadalupe. I found a video of Salsa dancing, and it just doesn’t fit the conservative stereotype of our Catholic community.

Can you imagine this happening at a Mass? It sounds like everyone at Mardi Gras had fun learning the moves. What next?

What are your memories of school dances? What is your favorite way to dance?

27 thoughts on “School Dance”

  1. I didn’t go to any dances in school because the class of 1974 thought that dances were bourgy and out of date. So we didn’t have any. My senior year, the class voted to not spend their money on a prom, but the junior class was all up in arms about that so they actually paid for the senior prom. I did go (I remember the dress because I have a picture of it) but I don’t remember anything about the dance at all. Took ballroom dancing in college, but couldn’t get wasband to practice and since we never practiced he never wanted to go because he wasn’t any good. Sigh. Anyway currently my favorite way to dance is to loud music in the kitchen while I’m cooking.

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  2. I didn’t dance in school. I was far too self conscious to go out there. I did attend a few for the music or band.
    And then at one dance, I screwed up all the courage I could muster, I went up to a cute girl I sort of knew, Katherine, and asked her to dance. She said, very sweetly, “uh, no”. And I said OK and spun on my heal (and I’m sure blushed) and went back to my corner.

    Attended the prom of a girl I was dating the year after I graduated. My parents let a few couples come back to the house afterward. There was some extra curricular activities in the basement…

    Slow dancing with Kelly. That’s what I enjoy. We took some dance lessons. It was hard with my bad knee and feet. And they had us switch partners. I didn’t come to dance with other women, I came to dance with my wife! Watching my feet, felt like I was looking down their cleavage all night.

    And yes, by myself, in the kitchen. Or with daughter. Or Kelly.
    Went to the movie of Queen in concert a few years ago. Stood in the back of the theater and danced.

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  3. As a Junior, the Senior/Junior prom/dinner in ’69 was memorable. My date was a freshman in college; the daughter of my Dad’s business partner. Lovely “older” woman. Vibrant and fearless. She taught the group Pata Pata. Nothing really elaborate. A simple in-place line dance.

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  4. i was a dancer who felt like i needed to keep time and not look too clunky doing the cool dances of the 70’s. the frug and the herky jerky moves were natural in my room but on the dance floor it felt like i was trying to get it right. jimi hendricks janace joplin the doors cat stevens james taylor. the bands were all playing what they knew. i playrd a few of those dances and that was fun. jethro tull elton john leon russel bob dylan . heck yeah i can dance to this stuff. i always wanted to learn salsa dancing. it lioks so cool and your almost having sex on the dance floor. my wife is a great dancer. i should ask if shes ready to teach me

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  5. Rise and Shine, Baboons,

    I was a wallflower at school dances unless I was invited by a date, and then I was a dancing wallflower who could not relax. It was not my scene. I could relate to Ben’s description of a school dance. Besides, because I was a daughter/niece of school personnel I felt like I was being watched by everyone, which I was. That was pointless because I rarely did anything wrong in any school setting. If I did I knew the story would reach my mother’s ears before I arrived home from school or any function. I cried in the nurse’s office once after an argument with my best friend. Mom knew about that and jumped all over me. So I simply tried to be invisible.

    Lou and I took dance lessons about twenty years ago. I wanted to learn the dance my parents called the jitterbug, but there are many names for it. I loved it. However, Lou could not make the transition from musician to dancer. He wanted the dance steps to match a musical bar, and they do not do that. A unit of dance steps is its own entity and it does not correspond to a bar of music, so the usually athletic and coordinated Lou was kind of a disaster when trying to comply with dance lessons. So that was the end of trying any defined dance step.

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  7. i’ll bet our Lady of Guadalupe gets it 100% the Latino community is all in sync and understands the fact that sexuality is not a sin. It’s a part of life that should be celebrated not discouraged. The Catholic Church has a little growing up to do and hopefully they’ll figure it out somewhere along the line

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  8. i’m a recovering Catholic and on occasion I go to St. John of Ark in South Minneapolis, which is the hippie Church that the fundamentalists go to and complain to the archbishop about the fact that the church is harboring gays and trans and all sorts of things things that they believe the church should not condone the archbishop. Let the pastor know that he got five more calls this month, but the pastor doesn’t need to come in because it’s the same old stuff and they just nodded at each other and acknowledge the fact that there is a Catholic community out there that is not in sync with the parishioners of joans

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    1. Just to clarify, that’s St. Joan of Arc Church tim is talking about. Don’t want St.John to the get credit or blame for that. I love St. Joan of Arc’s community, a truly progressive community that bears little resemblance to the Catholic Church I attended when growing up. I have only attended a handful of masses there over a forty year period, so I don’t know it well, but I have friends who are regulars, so I know their commitment to social justice runs deep. I have attended several funerals and memorial services there. If memory serves, that’s where one of the services for Peter Ostroushko was held.

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  9. I danced spontaneously as a little kid – there are home movies, and I was pretty adventurous considering no lessons… Then by high school I was convinced that I was clumsy, and I thought I looked awful doing any of the dances that were around then – twist, the jerk…

    It wasn’t till I found folk dancing (at about age 29) that I found out I can be fast and nimble, I have good rhythm… I eventually taught folk dances to our group. I love the line dances where you don’t need partners, and there’s nothing like dancing all together to some of the cool harmonies, strange rhythms, etc. from other cultures.

    But that’s not for everyone. I wish we could let people realize that dancing can be just listening to some music with a good rhythm, and letting your body move with that rhythm in the music. That’s now what I do when I’m dancing at a party – just start swaying with the music and seeing where it takes me.
    Sigh…

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  10. My sister and I, and a lot of other kids we grew up with, took dance classes every winter starting at age five and six. We learned all kinds of traditional folk dances at first. Mostly, I don’t think those classes were about dance, but about learning proper etiquette, how to behave.

    As we grew older, but long before any of us were interested in each other as anything other than friends, we switched to ballroom dancing. By the time I was fifteen, we were into the jitterbug, the lindi, and Latin dances.

    School dances were really not common back then. I remember attending only two: one at my own school, and the other at another school in my district. Both were informal affairs, no tuxes or fancy dresses were involved.

    I remember attending the dance at my own school wearing a too big dress borrowed by my mother from one of the neighbor ladies. She also made me wear nylons, which I hated. I managed to tuck a pair of white socks into my coat pocket, and quickly changed into them when I got to the gym where the dance was held. I spent most of the evening sliding in my socks on the shiny stone floor in the girls’ locker room.

    I never really got to practice the dances I had learned until my year in Basel. There nobody knew what a wallflower I was, and so they asked me to dance.

    I love all kinds of dances, but folk dances from various cultures that involve groups of people rather than couples, are probably the most fun.

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  11. I was struck by the little boy in the video, just sitting there and not paying attention at all to the drama the adults were engaged in behind him. He got as much of my attention as the dancers.

    I am not a dancer. I never was. Our ‘70s-era prom had a rock band. My boyfriend wasn’t a dancer either. We hung around for one song, then left. It was beyond my comfort level.

    These days, I might dance in the kitchen – alone – or not at all.

    I’ve heard it said that musicians can’t dance. That can’t be true if you think of all the famous performers that do both. I’m much more comfortable hiding behind an instrument though. Trying to dance just makes me feel very uncomfortable and awkward.

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  13. I danced with my mom to American Bandstand when I was little, but she said “no” to ballet lessons. I grew up thinking I was too clumsy to dance, but loved dancing with friends at home or in the middle of a crowded school gym in junior high.

    My high school was huge and divided into cliques. The kids I hung out with were in band, orchestra, theater, or like me, the school newspaper, and thought school dances were passé. No one in my group went to prom.

    Husband isn’t a dancer, so even though I’ve occasionally threatened him with taking dance lessons as a couple, we’ve never done it. I wish we had, and always wanted to learn to dance, but it’s kind of late in the game to start.

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  15. I was reminded reading above of the time I was dancing to whatever the company was. They used the music for footloose on a commercial, and I was dancing to footloose doing the sideways thing across the living room floor when my ankle buckled and I sprained it seriously and had to go to a funeral of a buddy of mine either that day or the next day when my foot was swelled up and I had to go on crutches, when people asked what that was all about, they got a real kick out of the fact that I blew my ankle out, dancing to footloose on the TV commercial

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