AFTER a wobbly and unsure history, organised ballroom dancing in Guyana is finally beginning to venture off on its own two feet. Last month, the National Ballroom Dancing Association of Guyana was formally launched at the Computer Training Centre on North Road, Georgetown.
In a brief interview with the Sunday Chronicle, Mr. Vernon James or `VJ’, as his friends call him, the Public Relations Officer of the newly formed association, gave a condensed history of ballroom dancing in Guyana.
Ballroom dancing as it is known today started, according to Mr. James, some time in the 1930s. It eventually came to Guyana (then still the colony, British Guiana) in 1947, after World War II. In those days, there were four schools dedicated to the art of ballroom dancing, one located in Kingston and the others in Kitty, Irving Street, and Quamina Street. Later, in 1952, Linden resident Godfrey Caesar a.k.a. Czar also set up a school of his own. Ballroom dancing from its inception in Guyana enjoyed a golden age until the political turmoil of the early 1960s which saw the popular pastime decline.
In 1983, Mr. Errol Thom and Vernon James launched the Harmony School of Dance at the GNEC staff club which saw a brief rebirth of ballroom dancing in Guyana and which culminated in the National Ballroom Dancing Championships of that same year. Sadly however, there was not another championship until 1991. And there has been none since.
For some time since then, the idea had been "up in the air" that a new ballroom dancing association should be formed. A meeting organised by members of several dance schools around Georgetown saw Mr. Phillip Fraser being elected President and Mr. Lawrence Drakes, Vice-President, of a 13-member executive of the National Ballroom Dancing Association of Guyana.
Ms. Doreen Williams, a former ballroom dancing national champion, now Secretary of the Association says that the current organisation will seek to act as a representative body, a sort of "union" for ballroom dancers in Guyana. According to Ms. Williams, ballroom dancers who are booked for events around the country often find themselves in situations where adequate remuneration is difficult to come by.
The Ballroom Dancing Association of Guyana also seeks to establish ballroom dancing in Guyana as the popular pastime it once was. Ms. Williams says that ballroom dancing should be seen for what it really is; something that takes effort and training, a sport, much like figure-skating. In light of this, Ms. Williams says that one of the other aims of the Association is to make the National Ballroom Dancing Championships an annual event.
For anyone interested in ballroom dancing, the Association's headquarters are at the Computer Training Centre Building on North Road, between Light and Cummings Street. (Ruel Johnson)