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Students head to ballroom class
By ELISE McKEOWN SKOLNICK
BOARDMAN
A group of high-school students got out of bed on a Saturday morning and headed back to school.
Instead of sleeping in, the students were learning ballroom dancing in a wide hallway of Boardman High School.
“I like to dance,” said Alana Lesnansky, a 17-year-old Boardman student. “I dance ballet, and I just want to try ballroom.”
Though she’s watched television shows that make dancing seem effortless, she didn’t expect ballroom dancing to be that easy.
“No type of dance is as easy as they make it look,” Lesnansky noted.
The free, four-week class is run by members of the Youngstown-Warren Chapter of USA Dance, a non-profit organization that works to promote ballroom and Latin dancing as a social activity and a competitive sport.
Each week focuses on two types of dances. The rumba and salsa were taught Saturday.
“I have a Hispanic background,” said Pedro Sanchez, 17. “So I thought it was important to stay close to my heritage and learn things of Latin descent. Salsa happens to be one of them.”
When he was younger, he watched his uncles dance the salsa.
“And they looked amazing on the dance floor,” the Boardman High student said. “So I want to learn it.”
Lynda McPhail, of A Time to Dance dance studio, took the kids through the steps of the dances. Starting with the rumba, she taught them a basic box step, which, she explained, is used in many dances.
After learning the steps, the students tried dancing to various tempos of music and with various partners.
Learning the steps, at first, was hard, Sanchez said.
“But once I found it was a slow step and then a fast step, then it made me a lot better,” he said. “Once you get the count and do it a couple times, then it makes it a lot smoother.”
It wasn’t hard to change partners, he added.
“As long as everybody’s doing the same step, it feels the same, you just have a different partner,” he said. “Some people move more with their hips and others don’t, but it’s generally the same idea.”
Dancing the rumba was fun, Lesnansky said.
“It’s difficult getting used to a new partner so quickly,” she added.
But she found that her ballet background helped her learn the dances.
The dancing continues for the remainder of March. Other dances to be taught include swing, waltz, cha cha, tango, hustle and foxtrot.
For more information, go to www.usadance2015.com.