My car enabled me to dance with twice as many girls on a Saturday night. I began at one dance at 9pm then departed at 11.30pm to walk into the second at midnight for free. Now that I had wheels, I decided to check out the City dances and meet girls I hadn’t known since puberty. These dances started earlier at 8pm. So I danced in the City until 11.30pm then hightailed it to a country dance. During college breaks, I danced nearly every night in the City: Tuesdays, Fridays and Saturdays at the Blind Institute, a few Wednesdays at the South Brisbane Library Hall and Thursdays at Cloudland. At each venue, I hooked up with my favourite partners. There always seemed to be new girls smiling at me too, hoping that one of my regulars had become irregular. I’d dance with these lasses in a progressive like the Tap Gypsy Tap, and if they danced well, lined them up for later dances.
Dad’s cousins invited me to join them at the South Brisbane Library dances. The girls weren’t good Lutherans either. This dance hall was a classy joint. The men wore tuxedoes and dinner suits and the women long ballroom dresses, a cut above our best clothes. We thought we had stepped back in time to World War One when we saw the dance steps danced and heard the music played. The crowd danced ‘old time’ sets with quadrilles, like the Lancers on their toes, and with balletic footwork. The people were mostly fossils from the same era, reliving memories of their youth. After a few times, I decided my moves were too fast for them. Besides, unrelated girls beckoned me elsewhere.
The City dance halls had their own unique tempos where the beats of their music matched their dance programmes. These were different to those of the country dances. The Blind Institute, my favourite, played upbeat music with a fast rhythm to accompany Waltzes, the Foxtrot and the Quickstep. It also dimmed the lights, which allowed a little sideline handholding. The Blind’s band kept to a similar programme of roughly twenty different dances a night. It always played Donnie Brooks’ song, Mission Bell, the crowd’s favourite. About a hundred couples took to the floor for most dances. However, the steps to the Jazz Waltz and Quick Step baffled most. Only about ten couples tried and half of them should have sat it out. Perhaps, these two dances had something to do with natural rhythm. When I’d eventually find that girl with the right rhythm, the Jazz Waltz would become our lifelong favourite.
Cloudland was built to be dreamlike. It had once been part of a fun park. To go there, people caught a rickety, open air cable car. They then walked through the dance hall’s iconic arch entry. The hall had domed skylights, which the stars twinkled through, and chandeliers that sparkled. Up above its specially sprung dance floor, there were private alcoves with luxury upholstered seating. Its dances were posh affairs where a proper orchestra played slower downbeat music to complement the sophisticated New Vogue dances danced like the Swing Waltz.
Before long, I wanted to improve my moves. I only knew ‘old time ballroom’ dances. The dance hall grapevine said Sandy Robinson’s Dancing Academy was the place to go on a Saturday morning. It held classes at the Ritz Ballroom at Petrie Bight where the City became the seedy nightspot of the Valley. I thought the time was convenient. The classes wouldn’t interfere with my Saturday nights nor Sunday cricket. So, I rolled up alone and hoped to find a girl with two good feet. The academy taught Latin American dances like the Rhumba, Samba and Cha Cha. I thought learning these hot, new moves at a faster rhythm was super cool. The faster beat was in line with the times. I listened to Rock and Roll on the FJ’s radio nonstop. The instructor split the students into small groups and gave a few quick lessons for the Rhumba. He then separated the girls and boys to each end of the room. On his signal, the boys broke into a stampede towards the girls and acted like cavemen. They dragged their chosen girls off to the corners. Such behaviour wasn’t my style! I preferred to quietly observe the girls from a distance then choose. Unfortunately, the remaining girls had short legs, rotund figures or no ability. I already knew their leg length indicated their ability to dance. Rotundness usually didn’t help their cause either. Several stampedes later, I scored a dark, long haired, Spanish looking girl with ability and obviously Latin rhythm.
Unbeknownst to me, Sandy Robertson provided the background dancing troupe to Six O’clock Rock, shown on the ABC television channel on Saturday nights. Johnny O’Keefe regularly appeared on the show. After the band act, the Sandy Robertson dance clip appeared as the finale act. Well, a few lessons later at the academy, a talent scout suddenly appeared and tapped my shoulder but not my partner’s. He asked me and a few others to return for a filming take that afternoon. I went along to the afternoon practices and film takes for a couple weeks. Regrettably, my assigned partner wasn’t the best dancer so I was probably edited out of the film clips. Then, the filming shifted to Tuesday nights at the television studio at Mt Cootha. This conflicted with my Maths One class at college. Alas, my television fame was sadly short lived.
My moves might have been smooth, but they weren’t going to give me a smooth ride through life.
