Some years ago the  students at Penn State were up in arms. Administration offices there were buried under a snowfall of petitions demanding that  injustice be righted and opportunity be made equal for all. There would be no campus peace until their demands were met for…more ballroom dancing classes!

In arms is just where they should be, too. In one another’s arms. On the dance floor. Doing our national dance, the Fox Trot.

I have been out of sorts ever since I was pushed off the floor by people who thought that dancing was some kind of rhythmic sand box play, a  solo performance that you did in the presence of someone else but not necessarily with them.

This sort of thing was great if you thought that social dancing was a metaphor for auto-erotic  self-expression; an aerobic exercise you did in street clothes; or a diligent working-out of your own salvation in a musical environment so deafening that it suppressed thought, let alone conversation.

Social dancing is more than that.

We don’t want to come off too metaphysical and heavy here, but ballroom dancing is a metaphor, too. It‘s a sweet rendering of all the ritual relationships between a man and a woman raised to the level of an art we can all learn. It’s also great fun.

Yes, Charlie, dancing can be learned. It’s always baffled me that men who spent hours as youngsters practicing the elegant and expressive  motions of shortstops or open field runners claim they can’t dance. The problem is not that they have no sense of balance or rhythm, the problem is that they’ve never practiced.

Some of us never had that problem. Our parents knew that being able to dance  might be more important to us as adults than being able to play soccer ( which also develops grace and balance.) They dragged us by the ears to dancing  class. This was not necessarily fun but Miss Loomis, our dancing teacher, tried to make it so with silly games and “party” dances like the Hokey Pokey.

After a year or two dancing class seemed to improve, although you were careful not to admit it. For one thing the boys stopped being shorter than the girls, and we began to understand that it was  nice to hold a girl we “liked.”  Not too close, of course. Cheek-to-cheek dancing was discouraged by the Loomises of our world who would sweep up to an offending couple and gently pry them apart with the admonition,

“Always leave room for the angels.”

Of course women have to learn to dance, too. They are not born natural dancers. This is a story they have floated to make men feel like inferior clods. One of the worst things you can hear is the lady sweetly saying, “I’ll just follow  your lead.” Very flattering, I suppose, but a preamble to dancing disaster. If your dancing partner has not learned the dance you had better just lead  her back  to her seat.

In the days when people of all ages danced, and danced together, there was a wonderful occasion called the “Tea Dance.” After work, or after shopping, people would meet in elegant hotel dining rooms for a drink,  a little food, and some dancing  to the quiet music of a trio or quartet. It was a pleasant interlude before the commuter trudged home and the dinner rush began..

The tea dance was a place for a first date, a getting-to-know-you chat, a mild flirtation, or a dance with the daughter who had just told you she had met  someone special. More than one soldier or sailor said good-bye to his own someone special at a tea dance, before dashing off to the train that would take him to the ship that would take him far away.

I don’t think there is any tea dancing in Tucson, but it would seem a natural for one of our major resorts. I’m almost certain that there is no place to go for dinner and dancing.

In some ways we’ve always been a pretty good  dance town. There has always been a determined group of country swing dancers, and places to do that. High school and college students are beginning to swing (in the nicest possible way, of course) and  couples are learning to give new meaning to togetherness with that most elegant of social dances, the Argentine Tango.

Come on, Tucson,  shall we waltz ? One …two… three, One …two… three