Sat, Jul 04, 2009
 Instructor Anton Smith, far right, takes a hip-hop class through some steps at the Danceloft. At left is Casie Curran and behind him, Bradley Rhea.
James S. Wood / Arizona Daily Star
RANCHO RESORT MAINTANANCE POSITION Health Care Sierra Tucson Eating Disorders Program Coordinator General A1 Communications Cable Techs TV dance shows get Tucsonans movingArizona Daily Star
Tucson, Arizona | Published: 08.09.2006
Americans are mesmerized by the motion of a dance craze fueled by television and film.
In Tucson, they're motivated to get off the couch and into the studio to give it a twirl.
One local dance instructor has seen a 50 percent bump in students and inquiries, and dance studios say they're adding classes because of increased demand.
Few of those budding dancers will be in class tonight, however. They're probably at home, glued to the finals of Fox's "So You Think You Can Dance," which airs at 8 p.m. on Channel 11. The show, which drew more than 9 million viewers last week, has consistently outperformed its competitors across the dial and become a fixture in Nielsen's list of the week's most-watched shows.
"Dancing with the Stars," which drew more than 13 million viewers for its second season premiere last summer, returns next month to ABC. And "Step Up," a movie that pairs a classically trained dancer with a free-style hip-hopper, opens on Friday. Even the punk-tinged music channel Fuse! has joined the conga line with "Pants-off Dance-off," where viewers perform awkward stripteases in front of their favorite video.
Tucsonan Pam Bateman tuned in to "So You Think You Can Dance" at the beginning of this season, and the drama of the performance quickly sucked her in. She loved the graceful swoops and theatrical costumes of dances like the smooth waltz and the samba, and within days she began badgering a friend who runs a ballet school to start a ballroom-dance class.
"I think I tend to be more interested in the peppier kind of moving around, the dipping down, although that could be tough," the Civano Community School teacher says.
Local instructors say new students like Bateman get excited about hip-hop and partners dances like swing or salsa. Adults are behind much of the push.
In the past year, hip-hop classes for adults at the Downtown studio The DanceLoft "have totally blown up," owner Tammy Rosen says. She has already added one class and plans to add another in the fall.
"I hear people talking about the show in the dressing room. I hear them saying, 'Oh, I tape them all.' I think it's part of their thought process," Rosen says. She says that watching the dancers from their living room rather than on an unapproachable stage makes people more confident that they can learn the moves, too, she says.
Tucson dance instructor Jeannie Tucker, who is also a championship swing dancer, says she's seen the dance buzz grow in Tucson and nationally as she's traveled for contests. She's seen her number of students and calls jump by about half.
"In my local classes, salsa has had a huge burst of energy from these shows," she says. Enrollment of students of all ages has grown, she says.
Both Rosen and Tucker say they've seen a change in the type of dancer taking their classes, too.
On "Dancing with the Stars," C-list celebrities have to learn to keep up with professional dancers. On "So You Think You Can Dance," talented dancers are tossed into unfamiliar styles. A fan highlight this season was watching über-white-boy swing dancer Benji Schwimmer learn how to booty pop.
Before the show, Rosen said, her hip-hop students generally had some training. Now, inspired by the occasional ineptitude on the shows, brand-new dancers are stopping by for a lesson.
Bateman, for example, has no dance training. When she started watching, she wasn't even clear on what, exactly, ballroom dancing entailed. She thought, basically, it meant waltzing.
"Now, it's just this wide-open thing with the salsa and the tango," she says.
Younger dancers are following the fancy footwork, too, partly inspired by strong male dancers on the shows.
Five-year-old Ari Parker has spent hours pushing trucks around the floor of Flor de Liz Norris's dance studio on Fort Lowell Road while his older sister perfected her ballet technique.
"Ballet is for girls," he told his mother, Pam Workman-Parker when she suggested he join his sister.
Then he watched "So You Think You Can Dance" and begged his mom to put him in hip-hop lessons. Now he's learning tap and jazz.
This season on "Dance," he liked watching the crazily athletic, street-trained, hip-hop dancer Musa Cooper. He didn't care for Cooper's partner, Natalie Fotopoulos, and her dramatic style. Ari is glued to the screen when Schwimmer takes the stage, Workman-Parker says.
Even those not actively participating in dance are paying attention, says Linda Lowell, co-owner of Studio West School of Dance, which teaches salsa, ballroom and West Coast swing.
"It's put a new slant on ballroom dancing," she says. "I think a lot of people thought of it as something geriatric, from the Lawrence Welk generation. Now they realize that ballroom dancing can be very exciting to dance, very athletic."
● Contact reporter Erin White at 807-8429 or ewhite@azstarnet.com.
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