When John Travolta wore a white three-piece suit and disco danced under a mirrored ball in “Saturday Night Fever” in 1977, he ignited a craze that reached all the way to Secaucus.
“We always liked music. Every time we went to a wedding, we always wished we could do all those dances,” said Theresa De Marco of Secaucus. “But we wouldn’t dance at wedding receptions ’cause we couldn’t dance the way we wanted to.”
But in the wake of “Saturday Night Fever,” workshops popped up to teach people how to do such dances as the Hustle and the Bus Stop.
“We saw an ad in a newspaper saying there was a place in Union City called the Imperial Dance Studio where we could learn the Hustle,” said Theresa’s husband Sal De Marco, recalling recently how the couple discovered what would later become a passion of theirs. “The teacher was this guy Valdi. He’s a little Sicilian. And he works you hard for three hours.”
“Before we knew it, we were going three nights a week.” – Theresa De Marco
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The couple even had a practice room built inside their Secaucus home – complete with a polished wooden dance floor.
Although disco dancing is what brought the De Marcos to the Imperial Dance Studio, it was ballroom dancing that kept them going back for lessons several nights a week for 15 years. They stopped for a while to raise their son, but now they’re back to dancing two or three nights a week in Union City.
Several styles
Over time the pair would learn several routines in each of the recognized American Ballroom Dancing styles. These styles include the waltz, tango, Mambo, Cha Cha, fox trot, Rumba, Bolero, and swing. (International Ballroom Dancing is slightly different from its American cousin, Sal said, and is a style of dance they haven’t learned.)
“When you’re learning, Valdi is very conscientious and will make you go over the steps over and over and over,” said Sal. “Sometimes we would try to rest, take a break and he would point to another couple and say, ‘Get up! You see those people [dancing] over there? They’re older than you!’ ”
Anybody can do it
The De Marcos recognize that most people conjure images from the popular TV show “Dancing with the Stars” when they think about ballroom dancing. But they claim ballroom needn’t be intimidating.
At the Imperial, Sal said, “We have this guy Mel from Bayonne. He’s 80 years old. He really can’t dance. He just stands there and turns the girl. But he comes in every Saturday… It’s not competitive at all. Nobody has their nose up in the air.”
Ballroom, he noted, is really about learning the basic steps. He pointed out that even on “Dancing with the Stars,” celebrities get low marks if their dances have lots of fireworks but lack the basic elements of the required dance.
The De Marcos each said they’d like to see more people – both senior citizens and school kids – take up ballroom.
“It should be something that’s part of the school curriculum,” Theresa said, because it teaches concentration and other mental skills. (The De Marcos admitted that their 21-year-old son has yet to develop a taste for ballroom.)
They said dancing is also great exercise, especially for people who may not have other outlets to stay in shape.
‘Unable to attend’
Ironically, these days the couple rarely dances at weddings, even though it was a desire to dance at wedding receptions that partly led them to seek out Valdi.
“This style of dance takes a lot of room,” Theresa said. “What we realized is, if we dance, other people won’t get on the dance floor. And if there are a lot of other people on the floor we don’t want to dance because we might run into them”
Sal, who works with his wife in the real estate business, pointed out another problem.
“A lot of the bands don’t play the right music,” he said. “They don’t even know what you’re talking about. You know what we usually say [when we get a wedding invitation]? We’re unable to attend.”
E-mail E. Assata Wright at awright@hudsonreporter.com.