Couples enjoy monthly dance club meeting

Hal Degrow loves waltz, cha-cha, tango and bolero.

Swinging around with his dance partner, Degrow was part of about 30 couples who came to the monthly Faculty Dinner-Dance Club on Saturday.

For 95 consecutive years, the club has been a place for UNL faculty, Lincoln educators and their friends to ballroom dance to a live band.

Degrow has been with the club for 30 years, he said. Or maybe 35 or 40 years - once you're past 70 years old, things like that aren't easy to remember, he said.

But wait - it's time to go dance, he'll tell more later.

For now, though, there are two main rules on the club's dance floor in the East Campus Great Plains Room:

1. Keep your partner happy.

2. Avoid bumping into others.

Most members are in their mid-60s, said Roberta and Al Doeden, the club's current presidents. Most new dancers join while in their mid-40s and stick around.

"People started to realize that dance is a great exercise," Roberta Doeden said. "It's definitely better than sitting at home. And you can dance till you're 99."

Many members have taken professional classes in various studios around Lincoln and from the Doedens themselves, both of whom are ballroom dance teachers at Southeast Community College.

Even if some haven't, they can learn right on the spot. They just need to ask, Doeden said.

Depending on a live band's repertoire, the club members swing, polka, tango, waltz around, rumba, rock-n-roll and cha-cha.

Line dance and country dance have crept in recently, said Enid Newman, the club president from 1987 to 1988.

Newman and her husband, Ian, an educational psychology professor, met at a dance in the early 1960s. He was from a traditional family from New Zealand, where dancing was considered inappropriate. She was from Trinidad, where people learn to dance as soon as they are born, she said.

Now they've been dancing as much as possible and have tried to make it to all the club's dances.

But the rumba came on, and the Newmans had to interrupt the story; they couldn't miss it.

Left at the table was Delores Mather, a club member for more than 20 years. Mather's husband died seven years ago, she said, but she still comes.

"It's hard to put into words (why I come and dance)," she said. "I've made a lot of friends here. We are a very congenial group."

In the past, she said, female members used to wear formal evening gowns, men wore tuxedos, and they had dance cards listing partners for all the evening's dances, she said.

Now it's a very informal, lively atmosphere. New members are introduced and greeted. Almost no one sits around.

"Just remember, there are no mistakes - only variations," Doeden said. "The only mistake is not dancing."

alinaselyukh@dailynebraskan.com