The Blue Bubble Ballroom offers a variety of dances
and dance events every week!!!

"Live Music"  Every Sunday.  Rotating Bands like :  The Robert James Band , Johnny P. and the Wise Guys , Latin Passion , Harry and the Hightones , Jack Melick Orchestra , Centerstage ..............just to name a few.

Every Tuesday at 7pm We have Texas hold'em  Sit and Go's

May 11 th Sunday 7pm $10.00 Swing Gumbo May 18th Sunday 7pm $10.00 Centerstage

From cha-cha to fox trot, Blue Bubble Ballroom regulars step right
Web Posted: 08/20/2005 12:00 AM CDT

Michael Quintanilla
San Antonio Express-News
(Photos by Kevin Geil/Express-News
 
 
 
 
 

For three hours they haven't stopped dancing — nearly 150 waltzers, fox trotters and East Coast swingers packed onto the dance floor at San Antonio's Blue Bubble Ballroom, "The Triple B" to its regulars. It's a Sunday night crowd of hipsters and those who know how to work their hips into dancing machines from another era.

Blue Bubble Ballroom owner Fritzi Fredrick gets ready for the weekly Sunday Night Dance.

Over there, on the edge of the dance floor is 65-year-old Japanese-born Masaya Grishaw, who, at age 15 — and against her mother's wishes — danced in Osaka's most famous dance hall, the Red Bubble Ballroom. Now, "The Triple B," which she helped name after speaking to owner Fritzi Fredrick, is her hangout, the place where she can glam it up, ham it up and hoof it up on the dance floor. "Dancing keeps me young," she says.

Indeed, she looks 20 years younger, her curvaceous size 4 body slinking on the dance floor in a blue sequined floor-length dress with a slit up to one's imagination. Her design, of course. When she's not dancing, she's sewing.

At the moment, she's doing the cha-cha, moving like nobody's business with her partner, Carlos Villalobos, in his early 60s, a city employee in the information technology services department. But out here, Villalobos the computer geek is the cha-cha champ as he executes the quick, quick slow, quick, quick slow steps with the pep of a seasoned professional. Grishaw, in silver heels to match her dangling liquid silver earrings, has been his dance partner — and friend — for nearly 10 years. (Cracks Villalobos: "If my ex and I had gone out dancing every other weekend, we'd still be married.")

Nearby is Patrick McMillan, probably the slickest of them all, a boyish-looking man also in his early 60s, decked out in a suit and tie and a head of dark hair. He's known as the "dancing professor" because with 35 years experience of shuffling and sliding on wooden floors, he instructs waltz, tango and fox trot — you name it, he can teach it and does superbly — at Trinity University during the day and in the evenings at Our Lady of the Lake University and University of the Incarnate Word.

Here, at The Triple B everyone is, well, having a ball (and at a bargain with a $5 cover charge) as they relive the past while knowing they are part of a current nationwide trend. One with a big band soundtrack that takes you back to a time when the jitterbug was the real hip hop, when the waltz was the ultimate slow dance and when the mambo was the salsa sensation.

Media-driven by the popularity of this summer's runaway hit, ABC's "Dancing Wwith the Stars," a reality series that paired celebrities with professional dancers, ballroom dancing has also been fueled by the Jennifer Lopez and Richard Gere film "Shall We Dance," the remake of the 1996 Japanese film. Add the recent documentary "Mad Hot Ballroom" and the current "So You Think You Can Dance," another reality series on Fox TV, and the future "Ballroom Bootcamp" coming in October. And then there's next year's ballroom flick, "Take the Lead" starring Antonio Banderas in the story of ballroom hoofer Pierre Dulane.

Not since the late 1970s catapulted disco dance fever with John Travolta shaking his groove thing on movie screens in "Saturday Night Fever" has a dance trend been as mainstream hot.

From 7 to 10 p.m., Triple B ballroom aficionados dance like stars, smooth, suave, slick without bumping into each other and always appearing as if each and every couple is under the spotlight. They put on their fanciest ballroom get-ups, and for women, that means a dress that shimmers or floats or is strategically slit, and above all, has an extreme swirl factor. Guys come in ties or in all black and are drenched in after-shave.

By the looks of it, ballroom boogie-woogieing won't go away anytime soon, says Fredrick, 42, an interior designer by profession, who purchased a Dillard's warehouse in the 9300 block of Broadway and 10 months ago transformed it into the N. Broadway Performing Arts Center, complete with dance studios. The Triple B with its mirrored walls, mirrored spinning ball, crystal chandeliers and shiny, hardwood floor is its centerpiece.

Better get out of the way because here comes the professor showing everyone here how it's done (three quick steps and then two slower ones on the one beat and two beat) with one of his two dates on this particular evening. His stylishly coiffed dancers are Kathleen Mann and Jacqueline Veatch, both in their 80s, women who patiently sit one out while the other hoofs it up with the prof.

"God wants me to teach ballroom dancing," McMillan says, seriously, adding he first got the call to do this at Arthur Murray Studios back in the day when ballroom dancing didn't quite have the heat it's generating today.

See how gracefully McMillan holds Mann in his arms, she chicly dressed in a pantsuit, her hair flipped and sprayed to perfection. With 32 years of her own ballroom experience under her heels, she's keeping up quite nicely, thank you. She loves to recall the time she and her husband (he in tails, she in a couturier ball gown) glided in the gilded and grandiose Hall of Mirrors in the Versailles Palace near Paris. "It was a charity ball. And it was spectacular," she whispers and then dishes: "They had portable potties."

Jacqueline Veatch, the professor's other partner, reveals that it's been four years since she's hit the dance floor. It took a lot to get her out this evening but she finally convinced herself it would be good for her spirit, even though "I'm a little nervous tonight." Her husband, a physician and brigadier general, has been ill for several years. Suddenly, "Blue Spanish Eyes" blares through The Triple B.

Veatch, "a career war bride," raises her manicured hands, palms facing out and sweetly sways at her seat. Her eyes closed for a few seconds, she time travels in her heart. "My husband, Charles, adored dancing," she says in her Scottish accent. "He could do a rumba to this that would knock your spats off!" she adds, placing her palms on her cheeks, joyfully remembering the special moment.

The last time she and Charles danced was in 2001. They did a solo rumba in Bermuda where they renewed their marriage vows at an Episcopal Church. That's when the Alzheimer's began. "He was forgetting the steps."

But for Veatch, who hadn't danced since then, returning to the dance floor, "is like riding a bicycle," she says. "You don't forget."

In the throng of dancers is an older, petite blonde hoisted into the air by her partner. Her in a poufy red dress, him dressed like Johnny Cash. She squeals with each lift and later as she spins like a hurricane in high heels — her intention, of course — her dress rises in the swirl to reveal black panties. Others are similarly showing off their skills, sometimes caught staring at themselves in the mirrors and then pretending they haven't been busted. Others not quite as fancy in their footwork move slowly, romantically holding each other tighter, cheek-to-cheek in the center of the dance floor. They're a vortex to the swirl whizzing by, dresses making noise, the slide of shoes creating a rhythmic ballroom beat.

Among them, circling the floor on this recent Sunday night are newcomers — eight weeks of lessons to be exact — Annette Martinez, 33, and her hubby, George Rodriguez, 30. Martinez is an eighth-grade teacher at Connally Middle School, and Rodriguez is a science and physical education teacher and basketball coach at Rawlinson Middle School.

He also has a confession to share with his wife of 18 months.

But first, they must dance. That's why they're here and have been showing up three times a week. They like this better than bowling, better than softball, better than video games. They are so into this that later this month they are each plunking down $100 for a pair of dance shoes with suede soles.

"This is a major commitment," Martinez says as she and her man hit the floor to Frank Sinatra's "Witchcraft," played by disc jockey John Behrens, who used to spin at the long-gone Roarin' 20s, a speakeasy with live music and known for its ballroom dancing atmosphere.

"There hasn't been anything quite like that place, until now," says Villalobos, who offers that he's not a great dancer, "But I know them all." More important, he says ballroom dancing has kept him "from staying home and watching television and getting fat."

And regardless of one's age, marital status and background, "including life's ups and downs, you gotta keep moving," Villalobos says. "You gotta have fun. You can't keep crying your life away. Get out there and dance."

His is a refrain voiced by many on this night.

"I dance for pleasure and for good health," Grishaw says between sips of Gatorade (strawberry flavored) as she watches dancers from her ringside table. "That gentleman over there used to teach. See the man in the black shirt, he doesn't teach but he's a good dancer. But not for me, he's just fun to watch. And that man over there. Yes, I would dance with him. Oh yes."

Truth be told Grishaw will dance with anyone who asks "because to turn down someone is not good ballroom etiquette," she explains. "Besides, I'll dance to my grave."

Mann says, "Without music and ballroom dancing I wouldn't know how to grow old gracefully."

Through ballroom dancing Veatch recalls the past but also is excited about the future of the dance. She watches international tango competitions on TV. "And right now as we sit here, the Glenn Miller Orchestra is on PBS. I'm taping it."

She looks out at the crowded dance floor. "Aren't they a lovely couple, and young, too. It's so good to see young people here."

Veatch has spotted Annette Martinez and her husband George Rodriguez, who earlier had a confession for his wife. As they sat in the ballroom, with Fredrick dropping by to say hello, talk turned to the couple's lessons.

Fredrick: "How's it going?"

Martinez: "Great. George is a fantastic lead."

Rodriguez: "Ballroom dancing has taught us to listen to music in a different way. We know how to keep the tempo a little better. We hear a song and we're thinking, 'We can do this.'"

Fredrick: "How else have you changed? Has this made you feel sexier?"

Rodriguez, looking at his wife: "Annette is much sexier. Yes!"

Martinez, looking at her husband: "That's because ballroom dancing has helped me find my hips!"

Talk about timing: Just then, as the ballroom dancing gods would have it, Behrens throws down Glenn Miller's "In the Mood."

Naturally, everyone is.