The Grand Ballroom of the beautiful Sheraton Carlsbad, served as a very colorful backdrop for the, 2017, San Diego Semi-Annual Regional Medal Ball.
The Medal Ball is a beautiful ballroom dance event held twice a year for the students of the famed international, Arthur Murray School of Dance. Arthur Murray, his trainers and instructors have been teaching the world to dance for over 102 years and I am proud to be a current student under the direction of four amazing professional dancers at one of their San Diego based studios.
Every six months, Arthur Murray’s studios host a regional formal dance event to honor their students and dance level graduates. Each event carries a specific theme and that theme is celebrated throughout the décor of the room, the music performed and in the costumes of the dancers, instructors, students and guests. This year’s San Diego event honored not only the art of the dance but the “The Art of The Party”.
The room was decorated in a blaze of bright fully saturated color; with framed photo op vignettes and each table was centered with a painter’s ladder, pots of paints and brushes. The dancers portrayed their favorite famous artist, painter, sculptor, actor, painting or artist’s subject. Dances were performed to an eclectic array of classic and contemporary music artfully arranged to inspire the dance and compliment the dancers.
The afternoon’s agenda consisted of general dancing, lunch, several American Standard and international competitions; graduate an honoree dances and ending with a professional dance exhibition.
ancers and instructors represented five studios in the San Diego and Riverside county area that included Escondido, Oceanside, Solana Beach, Temecula and San Diego proper.
As a first time participant of this event, I was rather nervous and not sure what to expect. As many women and performers do, I headed to the ladies room for a last minute check to make sure myself and my costume were just as presentable as we were when we left the house earlier that morning and as a female in a public ladies room, I struck up conversation with several other women that were (clearly) attending the same event. After exchanging the compulsory “nice to meet you-s” and answering such questions as “what studio are you from?” etc., the conversation then turned to what inspired them to dance…for many of them, they felt it was a calling; a way of expression of art through music and dance. Some were fulfilling lifelong dreams, some started dancing as a type of physical and emotional therapy to help heal the pain of injury or the heartbreak associated with losing a loved one or a relationship gone badly, but one thing was for sure, we were an instant family!
Organizers and instructors requested the students be staged outside the ballroom until show time so they could make a grand entrance in a way that in somewhat reminded me of the way a football team enters the field at the beginning of the game. A little unexpected on my part but on the other hand a lot of fun, lots of high fiving and cheering as everyone found their tables or immediately headed out to the dance floor for general dancing until the festivities got off to an official start.
The dance floor was an animated mass of art come to life, renaissance master pieces performing an energetic Latin bachata with modern day artists, such as Andy Warhol or Bob Ross. Edgar Degas’ Star Dancer sweeping across the floor in a perfect tango with Leonardo the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle, Starry Night’s melting into a waltz with Prince. The marvelous thing about attending a dance with dancers is that you almost never have a chance to breathe. There is never a lull in the action, and the only time the dance floor was quiet was when lunch was served.
The afternoon was filled with general dancing, fun freestyle waltz, merengue, milonga and lindy hop competitions, honoree and level graduates performing the fox trot, rumba, swing, tango and cha-cha and then ending with a beautiful exhibition performed by each of the studio’s instructors, consisting of breathtaking renditions of American Standard, Latin, international and contemporary dance routines.
In while the Medal Ball is held regionally, twice a year, to honor its students that have reached a specific technical level in their training and they are held to a strict standard of grading and exhibition, the real joy of the Medal Ball is to experience how each dancer is moved by the music and how they interpret the dance, how emotion is expressed, how each step tells its own story and how they use the music as their muse… when they are allowed to freely use the dance floor as their canvas and their heart, soul and body as the brush, once again proving that it is the music that brings people together, heals the hurting and brings joy and laughter into our lives.
If you are interested in becoming a student of dance or would like more information on the programs that Arthur Murray’s dance centers offer, you can visit their main website at:www.arthurmurray.com