2008 Woodie Awards
Ballroom: Bringing people to their feet
With shows like Dancing with the Stars, So You Think You Can Dance, and movies like Take the Lead, ballroom dancing has captured the heart and feet of the nation.
Amy Saramago
Issue date: 12/6/07 Section: Entertainment
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The Viennese Waltz, Tango, Cha Cha Cha, Paso Doble, Jive, Foxtrot, Rumba, Samba, and the Quickstep. When you normally think of those dances you don't think of them as hip or the kinds of dances young people would be interested in. You usually picture American youth in the dance clubs grinding and shaking their booty or hip hop dancing. While imagining ballroom dancing you immediately have an old time movie still from a Ginger Rodgers and Fred Astaire movie. But it seems that even the youth in this nation have been captured by the allure, the class, the beauty, and the newfound fun of ballroom dancing. Thankfully for the youth some of the dances still include booty shaking.
Dance crazes usually center around a type of outrageous dance (accompanying a song) that is passé almost as soon as it starts, hence the Macarena, the ketchup dance, or most recently the solider boy dance (also known as the "Superman"). Who would ever think ballroom dancing would be the new dance craze hitting not only the United States? The craze may have stemmed from the new interest in this dance form in TV shows like Dancing with the Stars and So You Think You Can Dance? as well as movies like Take the Lead, which have Americans hooked to watching ballroom and some people are now even trying it for themselves.
Dancing with the Stars is a type of reality TV show where celebrities (usually B-listers or ones trying to make a comeback) are partnered with a professional ball room dancer, and compete each week learning a new style of ballroom dance. Each contestant usually only has 4 or 5 days to learn the new style and their specific choreography before having to dance it live on national television, and each week the couple with the lowest combined score from the judges and viewers votes gets eliminated. This show, has an audience of about 20 million for each show, and many believe has reignited the unforgotten love of ball room dancing into America's hearts.
Ashley Martins, an avid viewer of Dancing with the Stars, admits, "I started watching last season because my friend made me watch the show and I got hooked. I loved it because it was so entertaining." These TV programs as well as movies have helped ballroom dancing infiltrate the popular mainstream and once again become a popular form of entertainment and dance. "There are so many entertaining aspects like the costumes, the dancing, the music, and the crazy comments from the judges, and the semi-celebrity contestants who are trying to make career comebacks," laughed Ashley. "I love when they do the behind the scene things like showing the rehearsals and interviews about the dancers' scores because the couples are always being funny and goofing off."
Dance crazes usually center around a type of outrageous dance (accompanying a song) that is passé almost as soon as it starts, hence the Macarena, the ketchup dance, or most recently the solider boy dance (also known as the "Superman"). Who would ever think ballroom dancing would be the new dance craze hitting not only the United States? The craze may have stemmed from the new interest in this dance form in TV shows like Dancing with the Stars and So You Think You Can Dance? as well as movies like Take the Lead, which have Americans hooked to watching ballroom and some people are now even trying it for themselves.
Dancing with the Stars is a type of reality TV show where celebrities (usually B-listers or ones trying to make a comeback) are partnered with a professional ball room dancer, and compete each week learning a new style of ballroom dance. Each contestant usually only has 4 or 5 days to learn the new style and their specific choreography before having to dance it live on national television, and each week the couple with the lowest combined score from the judges and viewers votes gets eliminated. This show, has an audience of about 20 million for each show, and many believe has reignited the unforgotten love of ball room dancing into America's hearts.
Ashley Martins, an avid viewer of Dancing with the Stars, admits, "I started watching last season because my friend made me watch the show and I got hooked. I loved it because it was so entertaining." These TV programs as well as movies have helped ballroom dancing infiltrate the popular mainstream and once again become a popular form of entertainment and dance. "There are so many entertaining aspects like the costumes, the dancing, the music, and the crazy comments from the judges, and the semi-celebrity contestants who are trying to make career comebacks," laughed Ashley. "I love when they do the behind the scene things like showing the rehearsals and interviews about the dancers' scores because the couples are always being funny and goofing off."
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