I joined the Tallahassee Arthur Murray studio as a trainee in August 2000. What principally
attracted me to the training program was the potential for improving my dancing and advancing
through the levels at a faster rate than a regular student program would. I had already been
teaching ballroom informally for a number of years: as an advisor to the University of
Wisconsin-Eau Claire Ballroom Club, as a coteacher and demonstrator at a small studio at
Eau Claire, as a dance consultant for several student groups at St. Lawrence University, and as
an instructor of ballroom at the State University of New York in Potsdam. The instructors at
the Arthur Murray studios at Eau Claire and Ottawa half-jokingly called me their “ex-officio”
instructor because I often ended up leading at parties and group classes because of an imbalance
in the gender ratio, and because new students tended to ask me to teach them a few very basic
steps, which I willingly did.
I found, though, that being part of the studio system as a trainee (that is, a volunteer under
training without pay, a choice I made as I did not want to jeopardize my duties as a university
professor) changed a number of things. Particularly as a trainee (once again, another
insider-outsider position: not quite a paid instructor, not quite a student), earning no money,
but spending a lot of time at the studio, assisting with demonstrations and basic classes, there
were a lot more demands on my time and energy. There was also the requirement of fitting into the
cultural milieu of the studio, which I found very different, particularly from the Ottawa studio—
the Tallahassee studio is a much more relaxed and social atmosphere, and so there is a greater
stress on “goofing off” and having fun. Unlike the Ottawa studio, which often had elegant themes
for its festivals, the Tallahassee studio, as its first theme party when I became part of its
staff, had an “inside-out, outside-in” motif. I came wearing a shirt turned inside out, but was
amazed to find the rest of the staff had gone well over the required limit: underwear worn over
jeans; panties slung over heads like hats; teeth colored to resemble decaying cavities. I knew
then that I had entered a different cultural milieu.
I sometimes felt that the analogy to being on call was an accurate depiction of the arrangement
as a trainee. As someone at the bottom of the proverbial totem pole, I had to make myself as
available as possible or run the risk that someone else could get assigned; at any time, an
appointment with a potential student could be scheduled or cancelled. I found that the most
important skills to being an instructor, particularly at the beginning level, were more business
oriented rather than dance oriented. Even though one might be tired or stressed or discouraged,
one had to force oneself to be supremely cheerful, perky, and outgoing, joking with students, or
being attentive to their every need or anxiety.The usual ritual involved giving the studio tour and
then beginning the basics of the general package, which usually included the foxtrot, waltz, rumba,
and swing, although occasional deviations, if the student was particularly interested only in Latin
dances, were allowed.We had a basic vocabulary to employ in teaching steps, including walking steps
(whether forward or back), side (or “excuse me”) steps, box steps (a composite of the walking and
side steps in the figure of a box), rocking steps (shifting weight alternately from a front foot to
a foot placed behind), and triple steps (tiny, shuffling steps done in triples, quick time). Thus,
the basic of the foxtrot involved (for the man) two forward walking steps, executed as two “slows,”
and two “excuse-me” steps to the left, done in quick time.The waltz involved two half boxes, done
to three-quarter time. The rumba, also composed of two half boxes, was taught to a slow-
quick-quick time.The triple swing involved a rock step and two triple steps. The triple steps were
often the hardest to teach because they involved quick, coordinated movement, in time to a fairly
fast beat, which not everyone could do quickly. If a student was having difficulty with a triple
step, then we were instructed to shift to a “single” swing, substituting a simple weight change for
a triple step, thus preventing the peril of frustrating the student.