New dance club offers variety
Club scheduled to not interfere with other dancing; many styles welcome
Joel Pavelski
Issue date: 2/28/08 Section: Arts
For Hillsdale College's dance enthusiasts, there's a new club in town.
The Hillsdale Social Dance Club meets weekly on Saturdays at 6:30 p.m. in the Mauck Solarium.
"People just show up and stay until whenever," said the club's president, junior Kate Brewster, "We're usually there until 9 p.m."
Brewster said the club offers a wide variety of dance styles and music to attendees.
"Last week we did 'Cotton Eyed Joe,' just for fun," Brewster said.
Variety is key to the new club. Founded as a way to take social dance outside the classroom last semester, the club is continually branching out into new steps and genres, Brewster said.
"You name it, we'll dance it," said co-founder Jarett Duker, a freshman. "We wanted to learn more than swing, particularly Latin dances, so we're always teaching the basics of one dance or another to each other."
"I love dancing anything - ballet, jazz, tap - so we dance a bit of everything on Saturdays," Brewster said.
Brewster, whose grandparents owned a dance studio, learned ballroom dance at an early age from her father.
"I took ballroom until I couldn't take it anymore," she said."I've been talking and dancing ballroom forever."
She said Dance Lecturer Douglas Spangler wanted to start an extracurricular dance club, and she seemed like the perfect fit.
"I talked to some people, met with the Student Activities Board, and now we're running every week," she said.
Although the club would like to increase attendance, which is down to five or six regular couples per week, Brewster said, members are not looking to compete with the Swing Club.
"We purposefully scheduled social dance on Saturdays so it wouldn't interfere, and we want dancers to come to both," she said. "We just want the campus to know that there are other kinds of dance out there."
The Hillsdale Social Dance Club meets weekly on Saturdays at 6:30 p.m. in the Mauck Solarium.
"People just show up and stay until whenever," said the club's president, junior Kate Brewster, "We're usually there until 9 p.m."
Brewster said the club offers a wide variety of dance styles and music to attendees.
"Last week we did 'Cotton Eyed Joe,' just for fun," Brewster said.
Variety is key to the new club. Founded as a way to take social dance outside the classroom last semester, the club is continually branching out into new steps and genres, Brewster said.
"You name it, we'll dance it," said co-founder Jarett Duker, a freshman. "We wanted to learn more than swing, particularly Latin dances, so we're always teaching the basics of one dance or another to each other."
"I love dancing anything - ballet, jazz, tap - so we dance a bit of everything on Saturdays," Brewster said.
Brewster, whose grandparents owned a dance studio, learned ballroom dance at an early age from her father.
"I took ballroom until I couldn't take it anymore," she said."I've been talking and dancing ballroom forever."
She said Dance Lecturer Douglas Spangler wanted to start an extracurricular dance club, and she seemed like the perfect fit.
"I talked to some people, met with the Student Activities Board, and now we're running every week," she said.
Although the club would like to increase attendance, which is down to five or six regular couples per week, Brewster said, members are not looking to compete with the Swing Club.
"We purposefully scheduled social dance on Saturdays so it wouldn't interfere, and we want dancers to come to both," she said. "We just want the campus to know that there are other kinds of dance out there."
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