From merengue, salsa, foxtrot and other great dances, Mississippi State University’s Ballroom Dance Club has it all.
Current vice president Elizabeth Rugel, senior Spanish major, said the organization aims to provide, promote and educate the ballroom dance club.
“We’re a student-led organization. The students teach it, organize it, schedule and do publicity. We meet once a week to teach students who show up for free if they have an account with the Sanderson,” she said.
Current president Amanda Washington, senior biological science major, said she encourages everyone to join the club.
“Dancing is fun. It gives you structure in a lot of different aspects of your life. It teaches you how to be a leader and a follower. It teaches you how to deal with people and different personalities definitely,” she said. “I’ve met 9-year-olds all the way to 80-year-olds. It definitely teaches you to be a people person.”
Rugel ventured into ballroom dancing after seeing a performance by the organization.
“I started my sophomore year. I went to Salsa in the Streets, one of the big events we have and I always loved the ‘Dirty Dancing’ movies and ‘Dancing with the Stars,'” Rugel said with a grin, “so I kind of encouraged it even more. But most importantly the friendships and relationships you make; I met my boyfriend in Ballroom Club.”
The organization stresses the leniency of membership and how involved each member of the organization can choose to be.
Rugel said she thinks everyone will appreciate that factor from the group.
“You make your own decision on how involved you want to get,” Rugel said. “You can come a few Sundays and learn a little bit or you can do extra things we do like take trips and go out of town with the club.”
The next event coming up for the Ballroom Dance Club is the Valentine’s Day dance today.
Rugel said the event will be a great opportunity for the international students to meet people at the school as well as learn a few dance moves.
“After Valentine’s Day, we’re having our Valentine’s dance, and we’re working with the ESL department to get all of their international students to come,” she said. “They can meet some American students and learn how to dance. We’ll be doing all different kinds of dances and giving mini lessons.”
Though the Valentine’s Day dance is one of their upcoming events, Washington said one of their next big events coming up is the All Star Dance Weekend on Feb. 23 in Tupelo.
“It’s a workshop which is definitely pretty big for instructors,” Washington said. “The club is paying for the instructors to take an entire weekend of lessons under professionals.”
She said how far students want to go into ballroom dance is what they put in it.
“Basically, you make ballroom. You decide how far you’re willing to go with it. You make whatever you want out of it. We’ll give you the opportunity, and if you want to go there we’ll help you as much as we can.”
Rugel and Washington instruct ballroom classes on Sunday in the Sanderson Center in Dance Studio A at 5:30 p.m.