The party was just getting started on a Thursday night in Oakland, but the dance floor was already warmed up.
Women in kitten heels and fishnet stockings sashayed across, fingertips light in their partners’ palms.
Illuminated in red and purple, the couples twirled and glided for three minutes until the music faded. “Next dance: Quick Step,” the automated playlist declared over the speakers. The dancers shuffled to find partners and started again.
Every Thursday and Sunday, as many as 80 dancers from across the Bay Area travel to Just Dance Ballroom in Oakland’s Embarcadero neighborhood to social dance.
For three hours, they perfect their technique in rhumba, cha cha, waltz and tango while songs rotate between sultry ballroom instrumentals and American pop. The bass is chest-thumping, but the vibe is more like a coordinated orchestra than a nightclub: Partners move their feet in sync, they sway close to one another, they pull apart while spinning around other pairs.
Dancing, socialization, exercise and fun are all goals on social dance nights on Thursdays and Sundays at Just Dance Ballroom in Oakland.
Andria Lo/Special to The ChronicleAlmost all of the dancers are retired, elderly and Asian American.
Social dance is a popular, generations-old pastime in the Asian American Pacific Islander community, a hobby that dates back over a century and spans different Asian ethnicities, socioeconomic groups and U.S. immigration routes.
The activity tragically was thrust into the national spotlight on Jan. 21, when a gunman walked into Star Ballroom Dance Studio in Monterey Park (Los Angeles County) and started firing. The mass shooting killed 11 people and shattered what has been a sanctuary for some AAPI elders: a ballroom dance floor.
The shooting could have halted dancers from continuing…
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