Growing Up Genteel to a Rock Beat
Inside the bare auditorium of the Beverly Hills Woman’s Club, 15 ten- and 11-year-old girls sat on one side of the room, nine boys faced them on the other. The girls wore white gloves and frilly party dresses with black patent leather shoes and white ankle socks. The boys wore somber suits or navy blazers with slacks, button-down shirts and ties.
When they paired off into the basic ballroom dance position, their young faces frowned in concentration as they focused on the way their feet moved. Step, together, step, together. On the portable record-player, the metronome music for this oasis of decorum blared the hard-driving beat of Michael Jackson’s disco hit “Bad.”
Welcome to Cotillion 1987, as old-fashioned as the horse and buggy despite its upbeat sound. Where boys and girls learn how to dance the fox trot and the waltz, how to introduce themselves, how to make small talk with the opposite sex, how to keep their elbows off the table. Even with the peaceful coexistence of white gloves and MTV, Cotillion continues to be the way the privileged learn proper social behavior.
Friday was the first day of the new fall semester for the Beverly Hills Cotillion, where three classes of fourth- and fifth-graders, seventh-graders and eighth-through-12th-graders meet for an hour and 15 minutes once a week for 10 sessions.
Cassidy Hoban surveyed the scene and thought about why he was here for another year. “To learn how to dance,” he said, tugging at his crimson bow tie. “Some of the people who come here are nice. We have a snack and serve drinks. And now I know how to dance . . . in case.”
“They learn how to be hosts and hostesses, really,” says Gloria Monaghan, who has been teaching this since 1963 when she took over her employer’s Beverly Hills dance studio. Its popularity has ebbed and flowed with the times, but Monaghan insists that the key to her program’s survival has been the music.
“During the rock ‘n’ roll age, a lot of cotillions wouldn’t teach the dance steps. I did teach it. You have to go along with the latest dance steps and the latest music.”
Monaghan teaches several cotillions around the area, including Westchester, Brentwood and the Santa Clarita Valley. The Beverly Hills Cotillion meets once a week at the Woman’s Club, a meeting hall a few blocks away from the Beverly Hills Hotel.
Most of the students are from private schools in the area like Harvard, Marymount and Westlake. Some are brought by parents who themselves went through Cotillion when they were young. The Cotillion master is Victor Rogers, a tall, distinguished British actor who still refuses to take acting jobs on Friday evenings. He and Monaghan have been working together for years. “We get on like a house on fire,” says Rogers. Of the class he says, “It’s my baby. I’d never, ever leave this Cotillion.”
They teach with a firm hand but an easy manner. “You have to make them feel at ease,” says Rogers. “And you never tell them a lie. Because they know. And if I tell them to stop something or they’re out, they understand.”
Rogers instructs the girls in the proper way to sit: legs crossed at the ankle, hands folded neatly on the lap. Two mothers, watching from the sidelines, immediately follow suit.
The boys are directed to walk over to the girls and escort them to the dance floor, taking their left hand and hooking it over their right arm. Then comes a march around the room and finally, when the children have formed a big circle, the basic dance positions.
It is here that the height difference becomes apparent, a difference that doesn’t really even out until the last class of seventh- and eighth-graders takes the floor. But no one seems to mind that a girl is a good head taller than a boy. Because there are more girls than boys, some boys dance with two girls at once, or change partners often to accommodate all.
“Girls, you never refuse to dance,” Monaghan says.
They learn the basics of the swing step to more of Jackson’s “Bad” album, some picking it up quickly, others struggling.
“It’s unbelievable that things like this are going on today,” said Batia Pinhas, who surveyed the Norman Rockwellian tableau. She watched as her 9-year-old daughter Jaclyn was learning how to cut in on a dance. “This is just adorable,” she said, shaking her head at the cuteness of it all. “I wanted her to learn how to dance and get together with different children. She’s a little shy.”
“I knew about this type of organization because I did this when I was young,” said Kathy Tardy, who brought her 10-year-old daughter Marilyn. “It allows a child an opportunity to dress up, to learn manners. Some people have very negative reactions to it, that it’s not a part of the modern-day world, that it’s elitist. But I think it’s good for them.”
At refreshment time the children walked arm-in-arm to another room where folding tables were set up. The boys held chairs for the girls, then went to the front table to get red punch in Styrofoam cups.
Ladies First
“Serve the lady first and then yourself,” said Rogers in his booming voice as miniature cream puffs were passed around on a silver tray. “And elbows off the table! Elbows off the table!”
The class finished with a game called “Chocolate, Strawberry and Vanilla,” a version of musical chairs that had the children scrambling for partners.
Eleven-year-old Edward Guido watched the entire proceedings, never moving from his chair. No amount of coaxing from Rogers would budge him. “It was my mom’s idea,” Edward confessed. “She said, ‘You’re going, that’s it.’ ”
Did he think the whole thing was just too . . . goofy?
He smiled and laughed.
The second class of seventh-graders filtered exactly as the first one had, going through the receiving line and taking chairs on opposite sides of the room.
“I’m involved with sports,” said 11-year-old Christianne Ginther, “like swimming, tennis, catch, football, baseball, ice skating and skiing, and I wanted to be more lady-like.” She had signed up with her friend Holly Ianieri, 11, who said that her mother thought this was the right age to be doing this sort of thing.
His First Day
Dennis Mascari watched calmly as his son Jason, 10, eased into his first day of Cotillion. “He’s the one that’s scared stiff,” Mascari said with a smile. “He has a little crush on one of the girls here, and she asked him if Jason could come to Cotillion. She’s a baseball player--he kind of fell in love with her. He didn’t recognize her at first here. I don’t think he’s seen her in a dress before.
“It looks like he’s loosening up a little bit,” he said, eyeing his son, who was dressed in a white suit, from across the room. “When we first got here and he saw what it was like he did a U-turn and started to leave. But his friends talked him into staying. You should have seen the three of them getting ready at home, running to the mirror, putting on their ties. He used all my cologne. The house smells terrible.”
After the class Jason looked like a soldier who had seen battle and come out alive. Would he be back next week? “Probably,” he said, a wide grin on his face.
The final class of eighth-graders went through the receiving line at 7 p.m., most of them old pros by now after having survived years of Cotillion. Girls dressed in minis, high heels and white gloves. The boys stuck with navy blazers and gray trousers, some shaping their hair into aerodynamic forms with mousse.
Chad Lange, a 13-year-old eighth-grader from Harvard sat with friends Brian Braiker, 13, also from Harvard, and Tim Lennon, 12, from St. Paul the Apostle School, and surveyed the female lineup on the other side of the room. Why were they back for another year of Cotillion?
“Cause our mom makes us go,” said Brian.
“To learn how to dance,” said Tim.
“To visit the girls,” offered Chad, who pointed out that Harvard was, after all, an all-boys school.
Since most of the students were Cotillion veterans, the dance steps were done with ease. Rogers took them through the basics of the swing, the fox trot, the mambo and the tango, teaching variations, then letting the students have a few minutes of “free rock,” where they could dance any way they wanted to “Bad.” Most huddled together in one big group and talked.
Afterward Brian and Laird Strauss, a 13-year-old eighth-grader from Harvard, mopped their brows and complained about the uncomfortable blazers. “This really annoys me,” Braiker said as he tore off his jacket and undid his tie.
What do their non-Cotillion friends think of the class? “They say, ‘You go to Cotillion? How stupid,’ ” said Brian. “But we come here not only to dance but to socialize. And the free food.”
“I enjoy it,” said Laird, who, with Brian, has been coming here for years. “It took me a while to get into it. We don’t come here just to learn to dance.”
“Yeah, you don’t,” said Brian.
Laird, ignoring his friend, said, “I come here to meet girls.”
