They are convinced that dancers have more fun, and they just may be right. A point made by everyone we talked to is that the appeal is from young to old. Ruth Anne Wolfe, artistic co-director of the Flying Cloud Academy of Vintage Dance, agrees. Vintage dancing can be adapted to a person s own physical abilities, so you can do it over a long period of time. The Flying Cloud Academy, whose marvelously evocative name makes you feel like dancing as you say it, is currently caught up in plans for its annual Dance Week, enrollment open to the public, but also maintains a year-round schedule of events for general participation.
Vintage dancing becomes reenactments of dance, something like Civil War reenactments.
We create costumes and reconstruct dances and music to make our balls experiences in social history. People say they never thought it would be like this. Ruth Anne and her husband, Andy Jewell, met at Dance Week 1996 and now are part of the core Flying Cloud Ensemble as performers and teachers. Each ball has a period theme. Classes preceding concentrate on appropriate dances for that time, but the culmination of the year as well as a wonderful introduction to the world of vintage dance is June s Dance Week at Miami University in Oxford, scheduled this year for June 25 through July 1.