Linden Hills Dancing Club celebrates a century of cha-chas

For ages, Joni Blomquist had gently cajoled her husband, Brian Stromquist, about learning to dance. She was a former dancer and loved to move; he was hesitant.

Then in 2000, he breathed deep and bought them dance lessons. They mastered the Lindy hop and swing, then decided to tackle ballroom, which led to their joining the Linden Hills Dancing Club.

While Brian Stromquist protests that he's still a novice, he also knows he's not going to stop.

"The reason I began dancing is because, whenever we danced, she was smiling," he said, glancing her way. "I'm just trying to keep her smiling."

The Linden Hills Dancing Club celebrates its 100th anniversary next month with a gala evening on Oct. 11 in Minneapolis. There'll be lessons and performances by professional dance couples, food and wine, rumbas and romance.

Oh, and smiles.

Once, it seemed that most lakes in Minnesota had a ballroom on their shores. There were ballrooms in small towns and ballrooms in the Twin Cities area, even if it was only the American Legion hall. People knew how to do actual dance steps. One, two, cha-cha-cha. Over fox trots and waltzes, people came together for thrifty entertainment, socializing and community.

Most of the members could walk to the former Lake Harriet Lodge on 43rd Street, where a third-floor auditorium offered a wooden dance floor with the perfect amount of "give" to keep legs from tiring. Women brought sandwiches, cakes and coffee, and people danced until midnight, Sandgren said. By 1931, with a new kitchen on site, the gatherings began featuring themed dinners and occasional costume parties.

Longtime members Patti and Jack Cagle recalled when the program committee "bought the food, cooked the food, served the food and washed up afterward," she said. "We even made a practice dinner beforehand." Sounds like a lot of work, "but everyone recalls that as fun."

But times changed. More women had less time, so the club's dinners became catered affairs. Costume parties fell away in the 1990s. People now drive in from Waconia and Stillwater. And, frankly, members have aged.

Dancing, however, is having a resurgence; witness the popularity of "Dancing With the Stars" and "So You Think You Can Dance?" Sandgren said the club is seeking younger members, people who want to learn to dance, people who crave doing something completely different once a month.

"In my opinion, in the last 10 years, our club has worked too hard and played too little," he said. "It's time to play."

"I think we got a whole credit," said Mary Olberding, who met Lloyd Otte while at St. Cloud State University.

"I was an accounting major and just wanted to do something fun," said Otte, who now is a certified dance instructor.

Olberding said the club does "primarily seven dances: fox trot, swing, waltz, cha-cha, rumba, tango and polka," but then she kept coming up with more: merengue, mamba, quickstep, salsa. "Hmm, well, maybe not salsa."

They dance, she said, "for the music and the movement and the closeness. I think it really strengthens your relationship. It's 'us' time. We tune out other people."

Not that you need to be a married couple.

Jean Heidenreich, 82, met Tom Gifford at an Arthur Murray Dance Studio in 1976. Now they belong to five dance clubs around the Twin Cities area.

"I still do all the steps," said Heidenreich, who playfully said not to ask Gifford's age because "he's younger."

Why does she still dance?

"It kind of gets in your muscles, I guess," she said, then laughed. "There's dance in the old dame yet."

Nancy Seeger recalled dancing as a young girl at a classic ballroom on the back roads between Princeton and Cambridge, Minn.

A sad story, maybe, but the smile never left her face while she was telling it.

Hoo boy, but time has passed.

Consider the club's earlier invitations. According to Sandgren's research:

"There were poetic summons in sealed Coke cans and airmail specials or telegrams arriving from foreign shores. April invitations were sometimes fatalistic maxims typed on Form 1040s. One invitation in 1977 was beautiful calligraphy on a brown paper bag, and another in 1965 was typing on a computer punch card."

Today, there is the Internet, with all the information a click away at www.lindenhills dancingclub.org. (That's where details for the Oct. 11 gala may be found. Deadline for reservations is Oct. 1.)

There's an etiquette to ballroom dancing, a way of moving around the room in a counterclockwise fashion called "the line of dance." Faster dancers keep to the outside — they've threatened to set up a separate track for Sorvala and his wife, old hands at the polka that they are — leaving the center for more leisurely couples.

Skirts float and swirl, a lovely contrast against the men's crisp tuxes (encouraged, but optional). Special dance shoes, lightweight with suede soles, are almost silent. While there is the occasional frown of concentration, almost everyone is smiling — smiling at each other.

"I've always loved to waltz," said Connie Saunders. "It's so romantic, so Cinderella."

She and her husband, Bernie, met 45 years ago at a dance, and danced at weddings and such until life got in the way. They joined the club last year "because we thought it would be good if we both learned the same steps to the same dance!"

They laughed, and 45 years didn't seem that long ago.