Ballroom Is Cool

Social dance can play a cohesive, empowering role in the lives of adolescents.

By Paul Rockwell

The joint is jumpin'! It's not the Bimbos 365 Club, or the Hi-Ball Lounge, or some other trendy nightclub in San Francisco. And there's no booze or smoke, only smiles, lifts, throw-outs, and youthful, lindy-hopping feet. The scene is the Albany Public Library and Community Center in the San Francisco Bay area, just north of Berkeley, Calif. It's "Swing Night," and 200 young adults are taking their first "partner dance" lesson.

Under the Albany, Calif., library's sponsorship, students from Albany High School have created a new dance and culture club for themselves and their fellows. They've generated their own graphics, coined a slogan ("Spin her 'til the floor smokes!"), and given the the club a name: "Bust-A-Move."

Here, teenagers themselves shape and organize social dancing. All Bust-A-Move events are participatory, and dances are organized in such a way—like old-time "mixers"—that everyone dances with everyone else. No one stands aside or alone. Every dance style expresses a distinct feeling for life, and all styles are welcome. Partner dance doesn't replace hip-hop (as some adults might wish). The Lindy Hop, salsa, hip-hop, cumbia, even folk and line dancing are merging into a complex mosaic of the past and the future, through...