By Alison Dakota Gee
"DANCING? YOU WANT DANCING? You follow me." The beaming coat-check man is almost skipping as he briskly leads the visitor down the halls of Hong Kong's Ocean City Restaurant and Night Club. Once inside -- Wham! The blast of music and of rainbow-colored lights hits you square in the face like an epiphany. A Chinese band is belting out The Girl From Ipanema as some 30 couples cha-cha their way across the floor.
Many of the women are partnering each other, like girls at a village fair.The men, fewer in number, seem to gravitate towards those women who are exotically dressed -- such as one in her mid-30s who has shown up in a strapless, backless, black taffeta number. And this is seven o'clock on a Tuesday evening -- when most of Hong Kong is trapped in the rush hour, weary and concerned with the anxieties of daily life. Ocean City is just one of a number of clubs catering to Hong Kong's growing legions of ballroom dancers. Young and old, first-time plodders and nimble twirlers -- they are all there, cocooned in the 60s and 70s as the 21st century seethes outside.
And it is not just in the evening that these gatherings take place. From 3 pm to 6 pm daily, Ocean City hosts tea dances, where dim sum is served up with the rumbas. In Japan, middle-aged Japanese executives can be seen on suburban train-station platforms, practicing not their golf swings but their dance steps. The country's hotels, quick to step in on the quickstep, have begun sponsoring organized evenings, complete with a live orchestra. The cost? No less than $180 per person. They are dancing in the Orient.
"DANCING? YOU WANT DANCING? You follow me." The beaming coat-check man is almost skipping as he briskly leads the visitor down the halls of Hong Kong's Ocean City Restaurant and Night Club. Once inside -- Wham! The blast of music and of rainbow-colored lights hits you square in the face like an epiphany. A Chinese band is belting out The Girl From Ipanema as some 30 couples cha-cha their way across the floor.
“Social dancers can feel it, when the lead asks, "dance?" and she says, "Yes" to him,
- at that moment they are already dancing.”
Many of the women are partnering each other, like girls at a village fair.The men, fewer in number, seem to gravitate towards those women who are exotically dressed -- such as one in her mid-30s who has shown up in a strapless, backless, black taffeta number. And this is seven o'clock on a Tuesday evening -- when most of Hong Kong is trapped in the rush hour, weary and concerned with the anxieties of daily life. Ocean City is just one of a number of clubs catering to Hong Kong's growing legions of ballroom dancers. Young and old, first-time plodders and nimble twirlers -- they are all there, cocooned in the 60s and 70s as the 21st century seethes outside.
"Lady" by Kenny Rogers 1984
And it is not just in the evening that these gatherings take place. From 3 pm to 6 pm daily, Ocean City hosts tea dances, where dim sum is served up with the rumbas. In Japan, middle-aged Japanese executives can be seen on suburban train-station platforms, practicing not their golf swings but their dance steps. The country's hotels, quick to step in on the quickstep, have begun sponsoring organized evenings, complete with a live orchestra. The cost? No less than $180 per person. They are dancing in the Orient.
"The sign of intelligence is that you are constantly wondering. Idiots are always
dead sure about every damn thing they are doing in their life."
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