Cultural Dessert

Dancing at Blackpool Tower Ballroom

22 October 2015

We first started ballroom dancing lessons 24 years ago – so long ago the original 'Come Dancing' was still on the TV! We've made some great friends through dancing as we've enjoyed trying (and failing) to master the full repertoire of ballroom and Latin dances. We've now been taking weekly lessons at Milton Keynes Dance Centre for nearly 10 years. We've never been interested in dancing competitively or taking medals: our dancing is purely social. So there was only one dancing challenge left for us to fulfil – to dance at the Wembley Stadium of ballroom dancing, Blackpool Tower Ballroom. Last weekend we realised this dream with a group of friends from our dance class, travelling to Blackpool for a dance organised by Philip Hurst. The Tower Ballroom is an amazing place: as you enter the room you feel like you are stepping back in time – but into a world that probably only ever existed in Blackpool. The dance floor is enormous and the décor is gloriously over-the-top, with ornate balconies looking down on the dancers. When you learn to dance you work out which steps will take you down one side of the floor before you execute a turn in the corner to take you down the next side. At Blackpool the floor is so big, none of these standard routines seem to fit. Saturday's dance included a demonstration by UK Latin champions, Ryan McShane and Ksenia Zsikhotska. Their performance was fantastic to watch, though this highly choreographed competitive dancing bears little relation to any of the steps we have learned. We had a wonderful time dancing in the Tower Ballroom: it was an incredible experience. And regular readers with particularly long memories will be reassured to know that our foxtrot is still going to be good!

Labels: Dance

posted by Robin Simpson @ 7:43 am