As Sam Smith’s “Lay Me Down” played through the speakers, two dancers moved closer together, swaying in a gentle rumba in the middle of the Memorial Gym’s basketball courts.
A particularly sultry move was met with wolf whistles and cat calls from the risers. When they pulled off a lift, cheers erupted.
Both the dancers and their audience make up the Ballroom Dance Team at the University of Idaho. The rumba was a solo performance for the team’s recital April 9 at Moscow High School.
At their dress rehearsal about a week before the recital, the team ran through the entire show, including everything from a Viennese waltz to a hustle. They practiced with and without music, and occasionally paused their routine to listen to the advice from their coach, Andrea Johnson.
“The team here is fairly new,” Johnson said. “But I’m helping to kind of take them to the next level if they’ll let me.”
This is the first semester the team has utilized the guidance of a professional coach. Vice President of the team Aubrey Milatz said in previous years the team was led entirely by students.
That doesn’t mean Johnson isn’t experienced. Johnson said she has been a ballroom dancer for 26 years and has coached ballroom dance groups for 15 years. She came to Moscow because her husband is currently a law student at UI.
After Johnson took her first dance class when she was 12 years old, she was hooked. Ballroom dancing became her activity of choice through her years in high school and college, she said. Performing and competing led her to travel various places across the U.S.
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“I made some of the best friendships of my life dancing in college,” Johnson said. “Like, they’re still my friends to this day. And that’s how I got to see the world, by dancing and performing.”
Graduate Student Kate Kaminski said a coach as experienced as Johnson has really helped the team improve.
“She’s an expert at what she does, and her choreography is fantastic,” Kaminski said.
Kaminski is in her second year of graduate school studying geology, while Milatz is a junior studying psychology. The students on the team encompass a variety of fields of study. Arill Bartrand, from Washington State University, is a double major in civil engineering and applied mathematics.
Though their other interests differ, the team comes together because of one important shared passion — their love of dance.
Johnson said dancing acts as a creative outlet for her. She also said many dancers she knows are extroverts who thrive on stage. For Milatz, dance is simply one of the only forms of exercise she enjoys, but she also likes the connections and camaraderie that take place in the process. Kaminski said dancing acts as a form of stress relief for her.
“When I was looking at grad schools I made sure that they had a dance team,” Kaminski said.
Bartrand said he doesn’t know exactly why he likes ballroom dance so much, all he knows is that he enjoys it.
There are many misconceptions about ballroom dancing, though Johnson said it has become less prevalent after the introduction of “Dancing with the Stars” into popular television.
Kaminski said until people see ballroom dance performed, many believe it’s a feminine activity and guys are afraid to give it a chance. In reality, she said it is very technical.
“It’s both a sport and an art form,” Kaminski said. “And a lot of people don’t really consider that until they see a performance.”
Although Johnson said there are fewer misconceptions about the activity, she is one of the ever-growing number of people who believes that ballroom dancing should be made into an Olympic sport. She said it requires just as much training and athleticism and is equally as competitive as other sports that are included in the Olympics.
“And you have to do it wearing three-inch heels,” Johnson said. “Or one-and-a-half-inch heels for the men.”