My father taught me to dance. He put the old WWII era records on the victrola and stood my feet on top of his and two-stepped. I'll never forget his very fav was a Nat King Cole and I stepped on it and broke it. Records back then were breakable. sigh.

He was a very big man, and I couldn't have been more than four or five. He always seemed to make time for things like that, or reading us books, or baking us cakes, or making us kites, etc, etc, etc.

I was thinking about this just this morning when I saw an advertisement for dancing lessons in the local paper.

I was about fifteen. My older brother's best friend, Ken Chapman, was very shy and had never learned to dance and neither had I. My brother thought that since Ken knew me he would take lessons if I would go with him. We went to Madame Amy's School of Dancing, a small local dance studio where amidst shelf after shelf of trophy's Madame Amy had earned as a young woman we learned the Quickstep...we learned the Foxtrot and we learned the Waltz. Madame Amy may have thought the Tango and such exotic things from South of the Border to daring for impressionable young minds and they were not offered.

Years and years later I met Ken again at my parents' Golden Wedding Anniversary party and we danced once more and found our feet had not forgotten.

I have to confess I'm addicted to "Dancing With The Stars" because of my adventures into the world of ballroom dancing.

I say I learned to dance. My wife says I never learned to dance. Steve in Baltimore County

When I was sixth and seventh grades I attended social dancing classes. The girls wore party dresses and white gloves. Boys wore suit and ties.Our teacher did teach the South American dances.My daughters had social dancing in seventh grade. By then white gloves were not required.I don't know if those type classes are still going on.With the dances of today and the clothes kids prefer to wear I can't imagine that kids would agree to such.

I was 8 and a Jr. bridesmaid at my aunt's wedding. I learned to dance at the reception and never looked back.

Like Garbielle, I went to ballroom dancing classes, specifically, Mrs. Polcock's Fortnightly Dancing class in 7th & 8th grades where we learned all the basic ballroom dances. Mrs. Polcock was about a million years old, or at least that's what she seemed to be to us, and led us through the steps clacking away on a pair of castanets. The music was provided by a piano player and a drummer who was seen before & after the classes taking surreptitious nips out of a bottle in a paper bag.

And yes, both boys & girls had to wear white gloves to the classes. Do they even have these thing anymore?

Ballroom dancing is a BIG thing in the New York school system. There are competitions that are hotly contested.

Here is a link that might be useful: some cool info