As Danville resident Bud Doan heads to the Harrison Park Clubhouse dance floor for another pass, one almost feels like asking him for a birth certificate to prove he’s 91 years old.
He and dance partner Pat Nickoson are heading into their second hour of tripping the light fantastic, and neither show any sign of slowing down.
“I’ve always liked to dance,” he said between the two-person band’s set featuring big-band and other popular music of the ballroom era. “I’ve been coming here since they started because it’s always a good time.”
Doan’s been a regular of the CRIS Senior Services Starlite Ball events, where active seniors get together to socialize and recall the same dance steps they took in younger years.
And with the ladies outnumbering the men by 3-1 at the dances, Doan has become a popular partner. One story has him dancing with seven different ladies one night, a story he is glad to nurture with a hardy laugh and slap of the table.
“I’m just lucky,” he said.
His success at the dance floor does not come without practice, though.
“I play records and tapes at home and dance in the back room,” he said.
Dancing was just a thing people did when Doan was growing up, he recalled, his first ballroom lessons coming when he was in grade school. That introduction to the arts at such an early age led him to an interest in music and he started playing drums in bands at venues all over the region after his uncle gave him a set to pound on.
When asked whether some of the venues were famous, he said: “They were just taverns where there were chairs and things flying around.”
He said he had further encouragement to dance and play music from his mother, a piano player for silent-movie houses before he was born.
Even age has been unable to take away the rhythm that has followed his family’s entire bloodline.
Nickoson said she was certainly enjoying herself.
“He didn’t step on my toes,” she said, as a Frank Sinatra tune pulled the couple back onto the floor for a slow dance.
They held each other close and drifted to a far side of the low-lighted room.
Active lives
No one knows for sure how long CRIS has been sponsoring the dances, but employee Veronica Martin, in charge of the Starlite Ball for the past two years, said they certainly meet the agency’s mission of keeping seniors active and involved.
“The idea of this is to have a good time, socialize and get some exercise,” she said. “You don’t see any overweight people at these dances. These people are all in good shape.”
The dances themselves are “self-sufficient,” she said, meaning the $20 per couple fee goes to paying for the cost of putting them on. Participants bring food and drinks for a snack table.
“Many of them are not even from Danville, they kind of work on circuit around the area and follow the bands and dances around,” Martin said. “It used to be bigger here, but the younger ones just aren’t filling that gap.”
She said CRIS is trying to enlist other seniors to participate in dance, not only through the Starlite Ball, but by offering a variety of instruction. While the numbers of participants in the programs have dwindled over the last few years, she said CRIS has made recent efforts to change that.
Free line-dancing classes are being offered on Thursdays and square-dancing lessons for couples are given free on Mondays. The free programs are designed to attract anyone with an interest.
“It’s good exercise for the mind and body,” said Bismarck’s Nancy Brain, who teaches the line-dancing class.
She said she and her husband go to the ballroom events for the dancing and the
socializing.
“This is about the only opportunity for ballroom dancing around here,” she said, adding that some churches had sponsored similar events for seniors, but not as often as the Starlite Ball, held twice monthly when weather cooperates.
“We have met so many wonderful people here,” she said. “It’s easy to build a lot of friendships.”
By committee
To keep the Starlite Ball going and to generate interest, many of the regulars from Danville have formed a planning committee for future events.
Sue Jones, a longtime dance enthusiast, said the committee is enlisting regulars to sponsor dance events when CRIS or other local agencies can’t.
“We think it’s important because it keeps us on our feet,” she said, “and most of us need to keep on our feet.”
The committee is “trying to figure out how to bring people in,” she said. “We don’t want to make money, we just want to keep it going.”
Martin said Jones’s last sponsored dance was a fancily decorated affair.
“It was decked out as nice as any country club,” Jones said proudly. “I really have a lot of fun with it.”
No last waltz
Not everyone comes to the Startlite Ball to dance.
In dance lingo, Mary Moore is what’s commonly referred to as a wallflower. But it’s not by accident. She’s been the set-up person and money-taker for the ball as a CRIS volunteer for the past 11 years.
“I’ve been coming out and helping ever since my husband died,” she said. “I enjoy talking to the people here and it gets me out of the house. It’s been a long time since I danced.”
She said she recently checked to see how long she had been working at the dance, thinking it had been “three or four years or so.” Instead, she found she had been enjoying it enough not to notice it had been more than a decade.
And last Wednesday, the night of the dance, she was celebrating her 73rd birthday and the fact she had been cancer-free since January, following 27 weeks of chemotherapy treatment.
And, as always, she was sitting at the ticket table chatting with everyone who came through the door.
“We’re lucky Mary’s here,” Martin said. “She means a lot to everyone.”
“I made it and I’m back at it,” she said before the dance was stopped to recognize her commitment of volunteering on her birthday. She also continues to volunteer at CRIS bingo and other agency events.
“I’m not going to slow down and I’m not going to give up.”
