Dancers have a ball
By Sara Gregory
Staff writer
Commons Photos by Sara Gregory
Gayle Robinson walked toward Chris Imershein during intermission to ask for his hand in the next dance.
He said yes, and she penciled his name on her dance card.
“You’re a brave man to schottische with me,” she said.
When the music started, Robinson and Imershein danced the schottische, a partnered country dance similar to the polka, at the 5th Annual Victorian Ball held at the Carrboro Century Center March 24.
Hosted each year by Imershein’s Triangle Vintage Dance, the annual ball is a showcase for Victorian dance – dances such as the waltz, the polka, the grand march and the schottische that have grown back in favor more than 100 years after their heyday.
Throughout the night women in corsets, white gloves and full dresses took dances from elegant men in tuxedos and tails – and from other women.
“Ladies and ladies should feel free to dance together,” Imershein said. “Especially in the Civil War era, when the men were off fighting, you had ladies dance with ladies.”
Attendance at Saturday’s ball was representative of the range of individuals vintage dance attracts, Dawn Imershein, Chris’s wife and co-instructor, said.
“We have one student who’s 11, and then all the way up to people in their 60s,” she said.
Dawn said that dancers are attracted to vintage dance for a variety of reasons and that all have favorite dances.
“It really does depend on the person,” she said. “Some people find Victorian waltzes really hard, but once you get the hang of them, they can be a lot of fun.”
This was Robinson’s second Victorian Ball, and she said she enjoyed last year’s ball so much she decided to come back.
“I do swing dance, but I hadn’t done vintage dance before,” she said. “They’re easy dances to pick up if you have a sense of rhythm.”
Robinson’s favorite dance is the Victorian waltz.
“When it’s really done well, it’s beautiful,” she said.
Making the transition from other social dances to vintage dance is common, and, like Robinson, many at Saturday’s ball started with other forms of dance.
Dawn got her start in contra dancing, and she met Chris at lessons. She said when she saw him at swing dance lessons, she knew she had to get to know him.
“It was the kind of thing where I saw him doing both things and knew there was something,” she said.
Chris introduced her to vintage dance, and the two had been dating for a month when she helped him plan the first ball.
Now married, the Imershein’s have a three-month-old son whom they brought to Saturday’s ball. He spent the night watching from the sideline, just as Chris did when he was growing up.
“My mom used to bring me to dances all the time,” he said. “Mostly I’d just sit and read a book.”
Chris said he didn’t really begin to appreciate vintage dance until his classmates at Duke convinced him to take lessons.
“They kind of dragged me along,” Chris said. “But I ended up enjoying myself and took other classes.”
When he isn’t dancing, Chris mans the microphone, calling out steps to the dancers.
As the ball’s host, Chris is responsible for ensuring the night runs smoothly, a night he’s been planning for since last year’s ball.
With Dawn, Chris heads Triangle Vintage Dance. He started the group six years ago after moving from Connecticut, where he danced professionally with a traveling vintage-dance troupe.
When he moved back to the place he said he has always considered home, he couldn’t find a group to dance with.
Chris said that vintage dance has a following in the South, but that the biggest followings are in the Northeast and California. Chris credits Richard Powers, a dance instructor from Stanford University, for the latest wave of popularity.
“That is kind of where it started,” he said.
But back in North Carolina, Chris still wanted to dance.
“So he just said, ‘Well, I’ll have to start my own now,’” Dawn said.
In its six years, Dawn said Triangle Vintage Dance has grown into core group of about 20 dancers, in addition to the many more who take classes at the group’s two studios.
“A lot of this just takes a core mass of interested people to get things done,” she said.
Triangle Vintage Dance offers a dance on the second Sunday of every month, with a beginner lesson for the first hour followed by Victorian, Ragtime and Swing dances.
They also offer weekly classes for beginning and intermediate dancers.
At the ball, Dawn moves through the room giving instructions. She joins a line to lead it in the Grand March, and later, she stands along the side, nodding her head while calling out instructions as the line of dancers spirals in a giant circle.
“Keep spiraling until you get to the center,” she yells. “Then you can stop spiraling.”
Skill level is as varied as participants’ favorite dances. Some couples floated effortlessly around the room, seemingly unaware of other couples struggling to keep pace.
Dawn said the group encourages both those familiar and unfamiliar with vintage dance to take part in the ball each year.
Sophomores Alex Gorham and Oliver Sherouse at Duke University said they found out about the Victorian ball after taking lessons from the Imershein’s before a Viennese ball held at the school in December.
Sherouse said the dances were not difficult to learn.
“It’s easy to pick up at a level you can have fun with,” he said.
The ball also attracted a following from outside the Carrboro area.
John and Nancy McIlwee, of Raleigh, brought friends Larry Blasco and Helen MacDonald, of Salisbury, Md., with them to the ball.
John said he loves Victorian dances like the Bohemian National Polka and the Spanish Waltz, but his favorite type of dance was Ragtime, the style in the early 20th century that boasts of such dances as the tango and the fox trot.
“The proximity of the dances, the music, the tempos – it’s much quicker and more upbeat,” he said.
John said an interest in vintage costumes led him and his wife to vintage dance lessons years ago.
Now the two are part of Chris and Dawn’s group.
“We’re very interested in the Victoriana time period,” John said. “The food, the dress – just everything about it. It’s all just so much fun.”
