A quick slow dance, then off to the next

Khari Reed walked into the Obama Home States Ball and whipped out his camera.

“I wanted to take a picture of the scene,” said Reed, 35, who is director of medical affairs at Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago. “I wanted to take a picture of the scene walking in the door. There are a lot of people who can’t be here -- my mom, my dad, my uncles . . . my little cousins.”

So what if inaugural balls are a little like a senior prom? This one was in the Washington Convention Center. People walked in -- a two-block walk in the sub-freezing cold from the security checkpoint outside to the entrance. They lined up, beaming, to have their pictures taken in front of an official inauguration seal. Then they lined up to buy drink tickets.

The friends, fundraisers, campaign volunteers and former high school classmates of Barack -- then Barry -- Obama not only didn’t care that it was in a big hall with a cash bar, they thought it was fun.

“It’s a dress-up party for grown-ups,” said Marie Fioramonti, 47, a Chicago fund manager swathed in a dark, slinky dress with a train.

As for whether she’d get a chance to chat with the king and queen of the prom -- Barack and Michelle -- she said, “I don’t think any of us are expecting a lot of private time.”

That’s good, because the guests barely got any public time -- less than 10 minutes.

The Obamas swept in and the guests crowded near the stage, snapping photos of the new first couple -- he in white tie, she in a cream one-shoulder gown.

“This is a special ball because it represents our roots -- Hawaii, Illinois -- together,” the new president said.

The Obamas danced one brief slow dance -- the languid “At Last” made famous by Etta James -- and the crowd hung on their every move. He twirled her; the crowd cheered. The couple nuzzled foreheads; the crowd roared.

The Obamas grinned at each other -- were they chuckling at their tentative dance skills or just reveling in the fact that they were there, at last?

Obama cut the dance short with a wave of his hand. The new first lady gathered up the full skirt of her gown and stepped into the wings. Then they were off.

It was barely 9:30 p.m. Guests who arrived late never saw the first couple at all.

“I wanted to see them dance,” said a disappointed Denise Taylor, 33, a program coordinator at Georgia Tech. “Maybe they’ll come back.” (That would be extraordinary -- if not unprecedented.)

Vice President Joe Biden and his wife, Jill, shared their first inaugural dance at the Commander-in-Chief Ball, a gala for military personnel and their families at the National Building Museum. The couple danced to an instrumental version of “Have I Told You Lately That I Love You.”

Jill Biden, who caused an Internet mini-uproar over the length of her skirt at the swearing-in ceremony, wore a strapless, cherry-red ball gown.

“I may not be able to dance, but I’ve got a hell of an eye, don’t I?” Biden asked the crowd.

He reminded the audience that he, too, belongs to a military family, speaking with pride about his son Beau’s deployment to Iraq and about being an Army dad.

“I can tell you without reservation that that is a greater honor than being vice president,” Biden said.

The Home States Ball had its share of Chicago heavyweights, including the Rev. Jesse Jackson. But the night belonged to the people who laid claim to Obama’s history.

Fioramonti lives in Chicago now, but she went to high school with Obama at the Punahou School in Hawaii. She remembers when he was scooping ice cream at Baskin-Robbins.

“He was a nice, normal guy -- and he wasn’t that skinny!” she said. “All of his classmates -- we’re in awe. We were just bawling our eyes out on the Mall” during the inauguration.

There were plenty of Hawaii connections tonight. “My husband gave Barry Obama his high school diploma in 1979,” said Sharon S. McPhee, widow of Dr. Roderick McPhee, who was president of the high school from 1968 to 1994.

And 16-year-old Kamden Segawa, a student there, arrived with his father. Obama has captivated the student body. “That’s been the talk of the town this past year,” Segawa said. “He got a lot of high schoolers interested in politics.”

But Chicagoans dominated the ball. (And Chicagoans, by the way, never complain about the cold in Washington.)

Jordan Arnold, 73, who worked on the campaign, wore a leather jacket, leather pants and waist-length dreadlocks. He has been to balls before, he said, but feels “more connected to this one.”

“We went to Springfield” when Obama announced his candidacy, said businessman Patrick Hughes, 40, who lives in Evanston, Ill. “We’ve had a couple of good years -- and two bookends of cold days.”

“It’s the end of an incredible journey,” said Sue Berghoef, who lives in a Chicago suburb. “And I’m one of those people who believed from the beginning that he would be president.”

Berghoef, who was on Obama’s Illinois finance committee, talked of watching the parade earlier. “We were discussing, will he walk or not?”

“Then people started screaming, ‘He’s walking! He’s walking!’ ” said her sister, Rebecca Dekker, a sales rep in North Carolina.

Even Chicagoans weren’t expecting the Obamas to dance the night away with them. After all, the Obamas had nine other balls to hit -- conveniently, most were in the Convention Center.

“I went to the concert and saw him on the Jumbotron,” said Yolanda Strachan, 30, who works at the World Bank and was at the Home States Ball. “I didn’t have tickets to the swearing-in. If I could see him tonight, that would be fantastic.”

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carla.hall@latimes.com

Chicago Tribune reporter Stacy St. Clair contributed to this report.