WALTZING THROUGH THE AGES

The All Stars Band played at the Arena Building during a ballroom dance.

Tillie Boswell has been dancing most of her life and has no plans to retire from her hobby now. She still remembers learning when she was a high school student during the big band era of World War II.

Her husband had never danced before they were married, but he always loved big band music.

"I told him that if we were going to stay together, he would have to learn to dance," Tillie said.

They were married in May 1992. The following September, they started taking dance lessons together through the Cape Girardeau Vocational School.

Now, nearly six years later, they go ballroom dancing an average of two times a week, traveling to Sikeston and Carbondale, sometimes further if they can't find a dance in Cape Girardeau.

Once, shortly after they were married, they went dancing seven nights in a row.

On a recent Thursday night, the Boswells were part of a crowd of more than 100 ballroom dancers at one of the semimonthly dances held at the A.C. Brase Arena Building.

That night the Senior All-Stars, a four-piece combo, played a little bit of everything: fox trots, cha-chas, swings and waltzes.

John Hill and Dorothy House of Cape Girardeau sat back when a waltz came on.

"We're not waltzers. We're jitterbuggers," Hill said.

Hill, who has been coming to the dances at the arena with House for 12 years, learned to dance before the war.

"Back in those days the Marquette Hotel had a big dance floor, and everyone danced," he said.

But ballroom dancing isn't simply for those who first learned during the big band era.

At a nearby table, three students from Southeast Missouri State University sat waiting for the band to come off a break so they could dance some more. The students, who are enrolled in Dr. Marc Strauss' ballroom dance class at the university, had come to practice what they had learned.

Alison Montroy of Sparta, Ill., a senior at the university, said she took the class because her grandfather wanted her to know how to dance so she would dance with him.

"I wanted to learn anyway."

Paul Lett, a freshman biology major from Cape Girardeau, said his desire to learn increased after he went to a wedding where his dancing was less than stellar.

"My partners were so graceful and knew all the dances, and I was so bad I decided I needed a class," he said.

Gretchen Greminger, a senior historic preservation major from Desloge, said that her motivation was a movie.

"After seeing 'Scent of a Woman' I wanted to learn to tango," she said.

Ballroom dancing has even become popular at a local middle school where one of the teachers gathers a group of students together for 15 minutes at the end of lunch hour to teach them a few basic steps.

Ellen Lukens, a language arts teacher at Jackson Middle School and herself a student of ballroom dancing, said that the interest grew out of an interdisciplinary lesson that she and other teachers were doing about World War II.

The teachers and students produced their own version of a USO show complete with big band music. Lukens taught a few students some swing steps.

"It mushroomed from that," she said.

At the end of lunch hour and on Thursday afternoons when the final bell rings, 20 to 35 students crowd into the band room to learn the basics.

"It looked fun, and it is fun," said Amanda Dumey.

Some of the students sit back and watch. Others jump up to learn with varying degrees of success. A few of more timid boys extend their left hands for their partners to hold but seem to have difficulty bringing themselves to put their right hands on the girls' waists.

"The boys have the easy part," said Courtney Crowden. "We have to do all the swinging and turning."

The students will have an opportunity to use what they've learned at a big band-style ballroom dance April 18 sponsored by the Jackson High School Jazz Band.

Pat Schwent -- one of the band directors for the Jackson school district and herself a professional saxophone player who has played at many dances -- said that the idea of having a ballroom dance was to give her students the chance to play in a setting that was different than the usual concert situation.

"Kids forget the origin of jazz bands and the 30s and 40s, the big band era," Schwent said.

Schwent hopes the dance will attract people from several generations, with students, parents and grandparents sharing the dance floor together.

"We'll be playing cha-chas, sombas, fox trots, swing, two-steps, maybe even a polka or two," she said.