Dance club and its offshoot team put an increasing number of students on their toes
Preparing to step out onto the dance floor, Gordon Li sucks in a breath and buttons the top of his pants. They fit snugly from hips to waist, tailoring that will accentuate the way he moves to a Latin beat.
Li and his partner must impress some five judges at a ballroom dance competition, catching their attention with vibrant costumes and smiles, and holding their attention with flawless movements.
Once on the dance floor Li moves with his partner to the rhythm of the music, the bottom of her dress flaring out above a blur of high heels. They sharply execute the steps for the cha-cha, mambo, bolero or whatever else the music demands, while all around them is a moving sea of other couples trying to steal the judges' attention away.
"It's really surreal," said Li, 20, captain of Brown's ballroom dancing team. "You are supposed to be moving each part of your body at the right time to the music, and you have to get the attention of the judges."
The ballroom dancing club has grown in leaps and bounds since it formed in 1991 with eight students. Since then, the club has swelled to about 150 members, and formed an offshoot, which is Brown's competitive team.
The dancers have become increasingly skilled, recently claiming the top spot among 14 colleges at a regional competition held in Cranston, followed by Harvard, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Northeastern University and Boston University, in that order, according to Brown's head coach Christina Cryan.
The growing interest in ballroom dancing at Brown can be attributed to diligent publicity for the club and team, as well as a surge in interest among young people, she said.
"College kids are just rediscovering that this can be so exciting," said Cryan, 44, a professional ballroom dance instructor. "All their life they are going to be glad that they learned this. This is the kind of sport that is really a life sport - people can continue to dance right into their old age."
College students are not the only ones taking a new interest in ballroom dancing. It recently was recognized by Olympic organizers, and will be introduced as a sport at the 2000 Games.
Ballroom dancing includes some very elegant and smooth dances like the fox trot, the waltz, and the tango, in which partners hold each other close and move across the dance floor together, said Cryan. There are also Latin dances like those performed by Li that are "lively and playful" and for which a couple stays in one place and there is much more interaction between the two, she said.
As Cryan explains it, "the reason that we dance is because of the music. It's the rhythm of the music that inspires us to move our bodies - we are a visual representation of the music."
Anyone can do it, according to Cryan. If you can walk you have enough rhythm to dance, she said, adding that what must be learned is the ability to time the dance movements to the music.
Those who sign up for the club and team at the beginning of each semester have varied experience. Some, like Brown's club president Tracey Tebrow, may have taken tap or another form of dance in high school. Others come to the practice without any knowledge of dancing whatsoever.
"It's really coming back," said Tebrow, 21, of West Warwick. "In my grandparents' generation it was really popular, then it skipped a generation but it came back."
There are generally four practice sessions a week throughout the academic year, each five hours long. Half of those are taught by Cryan and the other half by the student team and club leaders. Members attend as many or as few practices as they wish.
Over time, dancers of similar ability are linked into pairs. However, there are usually more women then men at the practices and females frequently share male partners, said Tebrow.
Club members practice simply for fun and exercise, but team members are also doing it to prepare for competitions throughout the region, and as far away as England. The Brown team hosts about four dances a year, the latest held at the Rhodes on the Pawtuxet in Cranston.
The competitions are exhausting, said Li, whose specialty is the Latin dances for which he qualifies at an advanced level. They can be compared to sprinting for 90 seconds, then stopping when the music stops for about five seconds, then sprinting and stopping again. Partners repeat the pattern for five different 90-second songs, said Li.
Those who are in the most difficult competitions wear elaborate attire on the dance floor. Some of the costumes have been donated by amateur dancers, and others purchased from vintage clothes stores and made more flashy with beads and rhinestones, said Cryan.
For Li, it is hip-hugging pants, a dress shirt and vest on the dance floor.
Although he was only introduced to ballroom dancing when he entered Brown two-and-a-half years ago, Li has not stopped since. When his mind wanders in his academic classes, Li reviews various dance steps. A week before each competition he begins dreaming of the opposition that he and his partner will face.
"I knew nothing when I started," said Li. "But as long as you put time into it, you can learn it ... you really do feel the music."