What about a Slosh?

Whatever style of dancing you want to learn, Ian Black is sure there is a school for you

GLASGOW has always been a dancing-mad city. If it wasn't for The Dancin' and the romances this most pleasant of ways to meet the opposite sex engendered, most of us wouldn't be here. In the 1920s, as well as the 12 big dressy-up ballrooms, there were another 80 or so on the go.

In those days you learned in the smaller halls, and you had to learn, as being unable to dance was a social handicap beyond imagining, before you graduated to the bigger halls. If you could afford it you went to one of the dozens of dance schools or started one of your own.

These halcyon days are of course past, but dancing and dance studios and schools are still big in Glasgow and, of late, growing almost as quickly as they did all those years ago. Most of the big ballrooms have gone the way of the Charleston and the Twist. Ballroom is now a competitive sport, but there are many more styles.

A glance at your local directory will confirm that dance studios, schools and danceware suppliers are going great guns and whether you wish to learn classical ballet or belly dancing, you will find someone to teach you.

Lesley Wood is of dancing stock. Her mum and dad had a formation team in Come Dancing and she trained classically at Jean McLellan's Glasgow Ballet School, now sadly defunct. She runs a studio on the city's south side and is deeply enthusiastic about her chosen art. She says: "Dancing stretches the body and stretches the mind." And she means it. They do Tai-Chi and yoga as well as just about every other form of the art that there is. Her dad even comes in to teach ballroom to people who like holding people while they dance and to help all of the two-left-footed bridegrooms whose very first waltz will be at their wedding. Wood has some good advice for these last, which is: "Don't leave it till the week before the wedding. It is a lot more difficult to learn to waltz than it looks."

The number of dance schools and studios is growing because people do recognise it as a rewarding exercise, both physically and socially. It might be good for you to slog away on your exercise bike or pound the treadmill in a gym, but who do you talk to? How do the blokes and the blokettes get together? There are still many places where you can learn ballroom and there are a growing number of people who want to polish their Argentinean lounge-lizard skills and do the tango. There are also schools where you can salsa and studios where you can samba, not to mention rooms where you can rumba and places to practice your palais glide (forgotten about that one, hadn't you?). Scottish traditional dancing of the heuchter-teuchter variety, is not so much a social skill as a survival course, but should you wish to Strip The Willow, Dash with a White Sergeant, or get together with a Gay Gordon, then there is someone willing and able to show you how.

In short, if, like Gene Kelly in Singin' In The Rain, you just gotta dance, then you can find your chosen form of it right here. Quadrille, anyone?::::::::::::::spr19p2aadapt::::::::::::::

Copyright 2001
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