The capital city learns to tango, swing and waltz

It’s chilly in the packed parking lot of the Eagles Club on Springfield’s far east side. But inside the club’s cavernous concrete ballroom more than 100 novice dancers are shedding sweaters and mopping their brows.

“Tee, ay—n-g-o! Tee, ay—n-g-o!” barks Pat Lyttaker as she leads a multigenerational crowd through the basic steps of the tango. “Good job, baby dolls! Good job!” A professional dance instructor for three decades, Lyttaker peppers her lessons with pet names and reassuring pats on backs. Using a remote microphone and surrounded by a dozen assistants, most of them her former students, Lyttaker moves through the crowd, breaking down complex dance moves into simpler steps and often separating couples and dancing with each to get them accustomed to moving with a partner.

“It’s a really rare person I can’t teach to dance,” she says. “I’ve been at this a long time.”

Lyttaker, who lives in Williamsville, trained and received accreditation from the Arthur Murray Dance School in Memphis, Tenn. She taught for years at Arthur Murray and Fred Astaire studios in Florida and Virginia before returning to Springfield 14 years ago.

“There wasn’t a whole lot happening in Springfield back then in ballroom dance,” she says. “I started teaching group dancing at Lincolnland Community College and I’ve been at it in various venues ever since.”

Even Lyttaker says she could not have foreseen the explosion of interest in ballroom dance of the past decade, let alone ballroom’s possible elevation to sport competition at the Olympic Games. Thanks to “Dancing With The Stars” and other televised dance competitions, ballroom dancing as a media phenomenon, hobby and business is enjoying its greatest resurgence since the 1940s.

Lyttaker’s Thursday night classes cover everything from swing to salsa. Some students are young couples unaccustomed to slow dancing who want to learn to waltz at their weddings. Others are senior citizens who show up for exercise and the opportunity to socialize and make new friends. In between is an egalitarian mix of social and economic classes, ages and ethnicities. Some come with partners who never leave their side. Singles, or anyone who wants to change partners, raise a hand to signal for someone new to dance with.

Lyttaker says with dancing, little except the dance names has actually changed since her days at Arthur Murray.

“Swing dancing is popular now, but it’s really just a style of what we used to call Jitterbug.

There are polka steps in country dancing, and the Texas Two-Step is the same thing as the Fox Trot. I teach salsa dancing, but it’s pretty much the same mambo class I used to teach. Once you learn the basic steps, you can dance most anything.”

Anything, that is, except West Coast Swing – the current dance du jour in bars and ballrooms around the nation.

Danced in six- and eight-count patterns, West Coast Swing is a “slotted” dance that takes place in a confined space.

“Couples don’t dance West Coast in a circle

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