Ballrooms Stay in Step With ‘National Hobby’

Their faces move in and out of the shadows, their feet glide across the floor. A waltz ends, a rumba begins, then a tango. Taffeta rustles. Perfumes mingle.

“Care to dance?” he asks.

“I’d love to,” she whispers.

Along with baguettes and espresso, the French brought ballroom dancing to Vietnam. And, along with memories of war and dreams of new horizons, the Vietnamese brought it along to the United States.

“We started dancing as teen-agers,” says Hao Phan, 50, who came here with his wife, Thuy, in 1978. “Now we go out about three times a month.”

Phan was at the 10-year-old Ritz in Anaheim, one of many clubs in or near Little Saigon devoted to ballroom dancing. Plus, Vietnamese bands rent hotel banquet halls for big holiday dances. When Khanh Ha, one of the community’s hottest pop singers, staged one at the Anaheim Marriott, nearly 2,000 attended.

“Vietnamese people like art, all aspects of it,” says Viet Dzung, deejay for Santa Ana-based Little Saigon Radio, and ballroom dancing, a “national hobby” in the old country, is “considered very artistic and high class.”

Most take their first steps during their teens when peer pressure dictates an acquaintance with, if not mastery of, the form.

“Yes, you go to discos,” says Dzung, “but to know it all, you have to learn ballroom.”

Know-it-alls usually know the old-fashioned waltz, some swing, such so-called Latin dances as the rumba and tango, and “the slow,” which is akin to the fox trot but slower and cozier. It is favored by lovers, where as the cha-cha--which doesn’t require couples to touch--is good for first dates.

While Americans have kept Arthur Murray dance studios in business, most Vietnamese Americans learn dancing from family or friends. Its appeal, they say, is multifaceted: It provides an opportunity to get dressed up, to enjoy live music, to see friends. Typically, dancers go out in groups, or meet others at the clubs or holiday gatherings.

On a recent Saturday evening, parties of 10 and 12 arriving at the Ritz claimed long narrow tables extending outward from the large dance floor. The Shotguns Band played a mix of waltz-able love ballads sung in French, Vietnamese and English, and pop hit covers, as groups danced free-style in a circle. Dress ranged from elegant sheaths to loose-fitting pant suits.

Phan, who hooked up with several friends beneath the magenta and turquoise flashing lights, says demanding work schedules preclude much socializing. “In Vietnam, we had lots of opportunities to get together, but not so much here. Some of our friends work on weekends.”

If there is a cultural and generational gap between older Vietnamese who arrived in the U.S. as adults and their offspring raised here and assimilated into American society, one would assume that only the old folks would frequent the ballrooms, as alien as black-and-white TVs to most of today’s youth.

In fact, no such chasm is apparent.

Vy Duong, a 30-year-old optometrist living in Tustin, moved from Saigon with his family when he was 10. He and his friends enjoy plays, foreign films, home videos. Yet, they were among hundreds of twenty- and thirtysomething Vietnamese Americans who drove their BMWs and Honda Accords to Khanh Ha’s Easter dance in Anaheim.

In some ways, the event evoked an earlier era. Beneath the large shimmering chandeliers, most of the men wore suits and ties, only a few women stood among them in the line to buy cocktails and soft drinks, and the twist was the latest dance anybody did. The time-warp aspect didn’t escape Duong and his friends--doctors and engineers raised on American pop culture who nevertheless enjoy such outings.

The appeal? “Variety,” answers Duong, who learned ballroom dancing as an undergraduate through UC Irvine’s Vietnamese Student Assn. “I like ballroom because it takes more skill and I think it’s a lot more graceful than free-style,” agrees Alicia Nguyen, a 26-year-old software engineer from Anaheim. “In American clubs, the beat is the same all the time.”

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Taking the Floor

These venues for ballroom dancing offer both live and recorded music:

1) Diamond

904 W. Orangethorpe Ave., Fullerton

Friday through Sunday, 9 p.m.-1:30 a.m.

Admission: $10 Friday and Sunday; $12 Saturday

Information: (714) 526-2171

2) The Ritz

505 S. Brookhurst St., Anaheim

Friday through Sunday, 8:30 p.m.-1:30 a.m.

Admission: $15

Information: (714) 535-5999

3) Majestic

18582 Beach Blvd., Huntington Beach

Friday and Saturday, 8:30 p.m.-1:30 a.m.

Admission: $10-$15

Information: (714) 963-1089

Source: Individual clubs

Researched by ZAN DUBIN / Los Angeles Times