Reading, Writing and Rumba! by Amy Sewell Last March, in the music room of Tribeca’s P.S. 150, 23 fifth graders—nine boys and 14 girls—formed into couples and stood in a circle. The girls, wearing flouncy skirts over their pants, shot embarrassed looks at one another. The boys stared at their shoes, the wall, or anywhere but into the eyes of the girls just inches away. For the very first time, these preteens were going to dance with the opposite sex, but their instructor, Alex Tchassov, knew how to make it painless. He told them to hold their palms out flat, “like pancakes.” Lightly, the girls placed their hands on the boys’. Then the hands, still touching, were raised. “Imagine if they had overcooked the pancakes. Hold the pancakes that are very burned and standing up,” Tchassov continued. With that, the couples learned the first eight, hip-swivelling steps of the merengue, palm to palm. By the end of that first 45-minute session, boys and girls were stepping together as true dancing couples, elbows out “like chicken wings,” as Tchassov put it. More remarkably, they promenaded from the room in proud cotillion form—a girl on each boy’s arm. “Crowns up,” Tchassov said to the girls. “Bow ties out,” he told the boys. “We don’t think it’s gross,” said Wesley Hufstader, when asked how it felt to dance with a partner. “Like, who cares!” said Kyla Raskin. And so began the class’s remarkable 10-week journey into the world of ballroom dancing, with its courtly bows, sexy hip action, swirly turns and—finally—superheated competition. This, even by some children who at first “couldn’t clap and stand at the same time,” as their astonished principal, Alyssa Polack, put it. It was P.S. 150’s second year with “Dancing Classrooms,” a program of the non-profit group American Ballroom Theater, which this spring taught tango, fox trot, swing, rumba and merengue to children in 54 schools around the city. Tchassov, a slender 48-year-old Russian immigrant with a heavy rolling accent and elegant, no-nonsense demeanor, competed professionally in the former Soviet Union and even gave lessons there on national television. This class at P.S. 150 cast the children’s first-year teacher, Allison Sheniak, 24, as Ginger to Tchassov’s Fred. Blushing, she stepped into partner position with him as a gaggle of her grinning students looked on. With surprising ease and even occasional abandon, she followed, helping the expert demonstrate each new step. The merengue requires a kind of fluid hip action that hardly comes easily to the average 11-year-old. Indeed, backs and legs were stiff at first as the children lumbered sideways. When the music stopped, partners let go of each other as if separated by a mild electrical shock. “Move your pockets,” Tchassov kept reminding them, carefully avoiding anatomical references. “Keep the CD on your head,” he commanded, meaning: only wiggle below the waist. And many quickly seemed to get it. Tchassov had a child-friendly name for every move. The “scorpion” was the tango’s sultry promenade, a move with arms bent and fiercely thrust above the head. When describing the intimacy of the tango’s corte, a dramatic lunge that requires the couple to move as one, Mr. Alex exclaimed, “If I invite you to my party, you come. Don’t go to another party.” For the back-and-forth motion of the swing, Tchassov said, “Make believe we are sailors and we have to mop the deck.” After several attempts by the students to get the rhythm right, he said, “I can see who’s never mopped a floor before.” Above all, Tchassov would not abide girls who wanted to be the “driver” (lead) rather than the “passenger” (follow). When they tried, which was often, he called them on it: “Ladies, if you need to run in front of the car, do it somewhere else.” The kids worked hard. Daniel Aparicio bit his bottom lip, crunched his eyebrows and occasionally stomped his feet as he tried to commit the moves to memory. Ellen Sklavounakis dictated the count into Evan Lester’s face with the authority of a Nurse Ratchet. Ben Braun, who turned his head upward so he could see beyond his long bangs, fought the urge to return his hands to his pockets, where they seemed most comfortable. Girls who towered over their partners ducked obligingly with each underarm turn. Fox trot traffic jams and rumba pileups were common. Mr. Alex implored the children to “turn on those computers” and think. “I’m talking to the drivers and the passengers,” he said. “Follow the drivers and do not bump your neighbor’s car. There are no police here!” After only a few weekly lessons, the steps came naturally. Partners’ eyes met, hands were held tighter, dancers stood straighter, and the new confidence seemed to add an inch or two to each child’s height. It was about halfway through the course that the dramatic transformation to “ladies and gentlemen,” as Tchassov liked to put it, seemed complete. A session had ended and, without prompting, the students thanked their partners with a nod and a curtsy, lined up in perfect escort formation, and left the room. “Thank you, Mr. Alex,” they said in unison. Tchassov, looking touched, nodded with a smile. While ballroom dancing may turn little devils into ladies and gentlemen, it can also make them fiercely competitive like any sport. A semester of Dancing Classrooms culminates in three elimination rounds, from which a citywide champion emerges. Three days before the quarterfinals, P.S. 150 would go up against six other schools, Tchassov, along with the children’s teacher and principal, judged which students would represent the school. Only one couple could be chosen for each dance. As the three adults scrutinized the dancers, Tchassov repeatedly changed the music and ordered the kids to switch partners. When a few children hunched over in mock exhaustion, he kept up the drill. “It doesn’t matter how tired you are,” he said sharply, “You have to keep going.” The decision was difficult. “I like them all, really I do,” the instructor said. “It is just joyous to watch you dance,” said Polack, complimenting them all. But with the children now huddled together, Tchassov announced the pairings. “Dia Primus Dawson and Manuel Rodriguez, the merengue! Emma Hoite and Sean Villalba, the fox trot! Tess Scriptunas and Pierce Cady-Penny, the rumba! Ellen Sklavounakis and Daniel Aparicio, the tango! And Dominque Robles and Paul Lambert, the swing!” (Kyla Raskin ended up replacing Dominique Robles.) There were cheers, hugs and high fives, even from those whose names were not called, and everyone went home to a weekend of anticipation of what the quarterfinals, on Monday, May 21, would bring. What they brought was electrifying. The cafeteria of P.S. 11, on West 21st Street, was transformed into a sweaty arena, where the action took the form of tango dips and fox trot promenades, rewarded with the deafening cheers of family members and teammates. Parents stood atop lunch tables, their fists clenched, their hips moving as they strained to watch their children’s every step. “It’s just like ‘American Idol,’” said Andrea Hufstader, Wesley’s mom. Pierce Cady-Penny and partner Tess Scriptunas pulled out all the stops, getting the rhythm more than right as they did the rumba ferociously across the floor, seemingly oblivious to the competition. Daniel Aparicio and Ellen Sklavounakis executed the tango with faultless precision. Sean Villalba and Emma Hoite did a perfect fox trot, but without the fancy flourishes of some competing couples. At the end of each dance, a P.S. 150 duo strode off the dance floor like big scorers, to be greeted with outstretched arms and hearty high fives from their screaming classmates. And score they did. The team earned a spot in the semifinals. The win seemed to seal an unusual bond among classmates which had been developing since the start of the program. “We went to a trust-building camp, Frost Valley, and the camp did nothing to build the kind of trust that ballroom dancing has done,” Sheniak said. “It’s really united the boys and the girls.” Unfortunately, the thrill of victory was shortlived. In the semifinals a week later, some P.S. 150 dancers committed missteps, others lost their timing. On the sidelines, a couple of boys sat glumly, sure that they had let their team down. Encouraging words from Tchassov or Sheniak didn’t help. Awaiting news of the winners, the girls held hands, held still and held their breath. The boys crossed their fingers, and some seemed to pray. When the three finalists were announced, P.S.150 was not among them. The concentration that once filled Dia Primus Dawson’s eyes, now gave way to tears. Her partner, Manuel Rodriguez, discreetly wiped away tears of his own. Paul Lambert just kept shaking his head. Some girls consoled one another. Others silently packed up. Tchassov looked pained as he snaked through the group children, trying to console one, then another. “It’s just a game,” he said quietly to Alyssa Polack. “It’s not a game to them,” the principal replied. Sheniak placed herself strategically between her class and a reporter. “I feel like a mother protecting her kids,” she said. No need, really. The next morning, before the schoolday started, music blared from the classroom boombox. While the boys sat quietly talking in groups, drawing, or working at a computer, every girl was on her feet, stepping to the music. Asked how she felt about losing, Ellen Slavounakis admitted to disappointment, but said she was proud of what she’d learned. “And anyway,” the fifth grader said with a smile, “we just like to dance.”