They Still Know How to Swing : Sunday Afternoon Dances Are Happy Feat for Seniors

Eighty-five-year-old John Kite was beginning to get happy feet. The band was still setting up--heck, the drummer hadn’t even shown yet--and the canned cha-cha music had been turned off for awhile, but Kite was full of nervous energy.

“Oh, yeah,” he said, slightly stooped but with glinting eyes, “I do a lot of dancing. You watch me out there. I’ll spin ‘em around.”

And, about 20 minutes later, he does. Right from the get-go, Kite is dancing to “I’ve Got the World on a String,” smiling, maybe not pirouetting with the zest of Fred Astaire, but having a fine time, thanks.

He’s been doing it for the past eight years, showing up nearly every Sunday afternoon at the Red Lion Hotel in Costa Mesa for the weekly swing dance party at the hotel’s Club Max. The party is well-known to lovers of big band swing music, particularly a core of several dozen single seniors who congregate there every week to meet, listen to the music and--always--dance.

Dancing is the true common ground here, a happy combination of good exercise, skill, direct participation and, not incidentally, a natural and benign way to connect with new friends of the opposite sex.

This is hardly a senior version of a meat-market bar or nightclub designed for the twenty and thirtysomethings. It’s more clubby, more mannerly, more relaxed. The idea, said Bud Morris, who produces the parties, is simply to provide, for $8, enjoyable human contact to people who may have a bit less of it in their lives than they used to.

Many of the regulars, Morris said, are either divorced or widowed and may need some encouragement to “get up off the couch and get away from the tube.”

“We have a lot of people who come every week,” Morris said. “It can be a little bit tough for the first-timers, but we all help them along.”

The women, he said, seem to be better at it than the men. At first, anyway.

“The women seem to have a kind of network among themselves,” Morris said. “They help each other to get into things. But with the men, a lot of times the phone isn’t ringing and they end up sitting around watching the paint dry on the walls.”

Once the hook is set, however, both sexes often become enthusiastic participants.

“A lot of the women take all week planning what to wear, getting dressed up,” Morris said, “and the men really look forward to it. It’s a chance to get out and actually touch someone, hold them and dance with them. I kind of think of it as safe sex.”

There are very few wallflowers. Most of the dancers are more like Sandy Ivey, 61, of Huntington Beach. Divorced, he is a devotee of West Coast swing dancing and will perform that particular version of the classic swing dance with just about any woman who’s game to try it. A former Arthur Murray dance instructor, Ivey said he has been coming to the Sunday dances at the Red Lion for two years.

“Most people here are single,” he said, “and it really is easy to meet people because everybody has that love for dancing in common.”

Not all the dancers are as polished as Ivey, however. Many are content to shuffle rhythmically to the music (the Tracy Wells Big Band provides it, mostly classic tunes from the swing era), while others try out new steps.

One concession to the relative age of the participants: No one has to shout to be heard over the music. It is lower-key swing music, and Wells has even made a specific note to the band members on the music order sheet, warning them to keep their microphones off unless they’re taking solos.

It’s a homey, almost country-clubby atmosphere. Low ceiling, earth-tone decor, three separate small dance floors, a horseshoe bar, a light buffet after the first set. The men are in slacks and casual shirts, the women in mostly bright summer dresses. There is a big screen TV set into one wall, but no one’s watching it.

Although most of the dancers appear to 55 or older, not all them qualify as senior citizens. A few appear to be in their 40s and one couple who arrived early for the 1 p.m. cha-cha lesson looked to be barely out of their teens. The young end of the spectrum is usually “about Mick Jagger age,” Morris said.

And there is a core of dancers, small though it might be, of married couples. They are quite welcome, Morris said, since about half a dozen of them--Morris and his wife, Ginny, included--first met at one of the Sunday swing dance parties.

“It can happen,” said Morris, smiling.