By Yang Chen © 2009. All rights reserved.

Part I: Bill Davies Discovers the English Style of Ballroom Dance

February 1964 (or was it March?): A black 1959 Triumph TR3 pulled up to the Peter Stuyvesant Hotel on West 86th Street and Central Park West, on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. A young man in his early twenties stepped out with his wife, both of them dance instructors, who only about a week before had been teaching at the Arthur Murray studio in Hartford, Connecticut. They were looking for Freddie Rust, the only American they knew who taught the "English style" of ballroom dance. His studio was located in the ballroom of the Peter Stuyvesant Hotel. As they stepped into the lobby, they were greeted by a banner, announcing in large black letters: "This is a raided premises." The hotel had just been busted for prostitution. Welcome to New York City, Bill Davies.

A sly grin lights up Bill's face as he recounts the story of his arrival in New York City four-and-a-half decades ago. On this summer afternoon in present day Manhattan, he is dressed in white, an ivory shade that contrasts with the silvery white of his neat crew cut trim. Bill is in his late 60s but his bright blue eyes still retain their youthful luster. His speech is slow and deliberate. His demeanor is relaxed, with a certain patrician flair that recalls another more genteel, more elegant era, one in which gentlemen in tailsuits and women in ballgowns spun around a stately ballroom floor to the strains of a Viennese waltz played by a live orchestra.

The ballroom of the Peter Stuyvesant Hotel, Bill recalled, was on the ground floor, and it was not very big or impressive. There were two columns offset in the middle of the ballroom. The roof leaked. And the hotel was somewhat seedy, populated by prostitutes. Bill made the trek to New York City with his wife Bobbi, who was pregnant with their baby, because of their passion for dance, and New York City was a cultural capital where they could expand their dance horizons.

Before Arthur Murray, Bill attended Cornwall Academy, a boarding school in Great Barrington, Massachusetts. Bill didn't care much for the academics and did not do well in his classes. He had been a star athlete from his earliest days, and playing sports -- baseball, football, hockey, tennis, you name it -- captured his interest and enthusiasm and kept him in school. He had even caught the attention of a scout for the New York Yankees, who invited him to try-out as a pitcher. But professional sports was not a path that young Bill would pursue. Instead, he found himself working at Sage-Allen, a department store in Hartford, Connecticut, selling men's accessories. He hated it. Bill was bored at the department store. He found himself more often tidying up the men's accessories rather than selling them. After about six months, Bill got fired.

School hadn't worked out and neither had Sage-Allen. Bill went down to Puerto Rico, where his father's company was holding a convention, and he spent a week or so hanging out there. He met a girl who taught dancing at the hotel where he was staying. Bill enjoyed dancing with her in the hotel's ballroom in the evenings and envied her lifestyle of spending the day on the beach and then teaching dance. Being a dance instructor, thought Bill, might be worth considering.

Upon his return to Hartford, Connecticut, Bill went to pick up his final check and noticed that near Sage-Allen there was an Arthur Murray studio. Ballroom dancing. Bill remembered the days from his childhood, when his parents sent him to cotillion class, where Bill was introduced to his first ballroom dance steps at the age of 7. It was one of his first loves. Bill went to cotillion classes for a few years, and although they were behind him by the time he finished grade school, he had always loved to dance. And he had just gotten back from Puerto Rico, where he danced with a young woman who seemed to be leading an enjoyable life teaching dance. Arthur Murray. Ballroom dancing. Well . . . why not?

Bill walked into the dance studio and told the receptionist that he was interested in learning to dance. She introduced him to the owner, Bill Nichols, who interviewed him. "I've just come back from Puerto Rico where I met a girl who was a dance teacher," Bill told the owner. "I'd like to learn but I don't have money to pay for lessons. What have you got for me here?" Speaking further with the owner, Bill found out that he knew Bill's step-sister, and he took a liking to Bill. "How'd you like to be a teacher?" the owner asked. "All right," said Bill. "That sounds good to me."

Within a week, Bill was placed in a training class. The woman in charge of it was "very sexy," Bill remembered. "I had a good time learning the tango." Less than two weeks into his training, the owner said, "I'd like you to start teaching." Bill was given his first students. "I stayed one step ahead of whoever I was teaching." Bill loved it. He was bitten by the ballroom bug.

Bill taught social dancing to single ladies and married couples. Soon he was signing up many students and became the top grossing teacher in the school. After about a year or so, Bill became the manager. One day, a young woman named Bobbi came into the studio looking for a job. She was hired, and before long, Bill and Bobbi started dating and soon thereafter, they got married.

On weekends every three months or so, the Arthur Murray studios hosted Dance-A-Ramas, which featured dining and dancing, and teachers partnered up with their students for showcases and competitions. The teachers and students from Arthur Murray schools up and down the East Coast (and sometimes from around the country) would gather at various locations for these Dance-A-Ramas. Bill and Bobbi attended with the Hartford studio and would see teachers from other Arthur Murray studios. One of them was Frank Regan, a former RAF pilot who came to Philadelphia by way of Scotland and Canada. At one of the Dance-A-Ramas, in Atlantic City, he danced a quickstep with his student, and Bill was impressed. Quickstep was one of the English-style ballroom dances, and it was new to Bill. He and Frank became friends, and Bill developed an interest in learning this English style of ballroom dance.

Then, at a Dance-A-Rama held at Laurel's Hotel in the Catskills, Bill saw a performance that changed his life. The couple, Gordon and Pat Webster, came from England. They performed the waltz, tango, foxtrot and quickstep. Bill thought he knew these dances, but what he saw made him realize that there was more to this ballroom dancing thing than he had at first realized. Bill was mesmerized by Gordon and Pat, the way they moved across the floor and partnered each other to the music, creating beautiful pictures together on the dance floor with each step they took. After they finished their performance, Bill ran up to them, wide-eyed, and asked, "So when can I start taking lessons?"

Gordon and Pat taught at the Arthur Murray studios in East Orange, New Jersey. It was a three-hour drive each way from Hartford, Connecticut. Bill made the journey weekly. At first, he took lessons himself with Pat. Then, Bobbi joined him for lessons with Gordon and Pat.

Then, in 1962, on a visit to a dance studio in Brooklyn, New York, Bill witnessed something else that would change his life. He went to see a performance by the World Ballroom Champions at that time, Bill and Bobbie Irvine, from England. Bill watched, dumbfounded, in rapt awe at this amazing couple. Bill Irvine's obvious athleticism was striking and powerful. As for Bobbie, "she was like a beautiful ballerina dancing ballroom." As impressed as Bill was when he saw Gordon and Pat perform, he was ten times more impressed by the beauty of the Irvines' dancing. Bill thought to himself, "I am never going to be as good as these two exceptional dancers. But I would like to see how close I can come to their level."

From the moment that Bill was exposed to the English style of dancing -- which would later come to be called International style -- he was hooked. He began to teach his Arthur Murray students that style. Because Bill was the top salesman at the studio, the owner Bill Nichols left him alone. As long as he was bringing in the money, who cared what he taught?

By this point, Bill had grown disenchanted with living in Hartford, away from easy access to training in the English style, far removed from a major cultural capital. Arthur Murray's management style did not offer Bill what he sought to advance his dance career. Bill's frustration came to a head at a regional managers' meeting in New York. A new president, named McCormick, had just started, and he addressed the regional managers who convened in New York. Bill attended in his capacity as the manager of the Hartford studio. He took the opportunity to express his view that Arthur Murray should supply training of the English style at all the Arthur Murray schools. McCormick dismissed the idea as a waste of time, and that ended the matter.

Back in Hartford, Bill Nichols was more sympathetic to Bill's request, and he invited Frank Regan to come teach the English style at the Hartford studio from time to time. But Bill's hunger to learn the English style would not be so easily sated. Bill wanted to improve his own dancing and teaching, and he believed that the English style provided a pathway towards achieving dance excellence. Bill heard about a dance competition called the Atlantic Ball, held on Riverside Drive on Manhattan's west side. In the summer of 1963, Bill drove out to New York City to check it out.

At the Atlantic Ball, Bill noticed a couple of good couples competing on the floor. Asking around, he learned that their instructor was an American by the name of Freddie Rust. Bill sought Freddie out and introduced himself. Freddie was scruffy, disheveled and unkempt, of medium height and build. He was about ten or fifteen years older than Bill, married with five kids. Bill learned that in New York, transatlantic cruise ships would dock throughout the year, and on these ships were English dance teachers who were trained in the English style. They taught and performed on the cruise ships. Some of them even competed back in England. While the ships were docked, these English dance teachers would visit the local dance studios in Manhattan and teach for extra money and return to the ships after they were done. Freddie picked up the English style from these itinerant English dance teachers. Bill told Freddie of his desire to expand his knowledge and learning of the English style and how he was not getting that from teaching at Arthur Murray. "Come work for me," Freddie said.

Upon his return to Hartford from the Atlantic Ball, Bill talked over Freddie Rust's proposal with Bobbi, and they decided to leave Arthur Murray and Hartford behind to teach in New York City. In the fall of 1963, Bobbi had become pregnant. Bill thought that if he waited until Bobbi gave birth, uprooting themselves from Hartford might be difficult, so he and Bobbi left Hartford in early 1964 while she was pregnant.

In the early 1960s, the twist was the rage, and nightly people packed the Peppermint Lounge on West 45th Street in New York City to dance the twist. Partner dancing in the traditional ballroom mold was growing out of favor. "The times were changing," Bill stated, "and people at clubs were engaging in fertility dance behavior, dancing apart from each other." Interest in taking ballroom dance lessons, especially among young adults, had waned. Even so, ballroom dancers could still go ballroom dancing at Roseland, the Palladium and the Cheetah Club. At Freddie Rust's school, Bill taught the English style to social dancers who continued to frequent New York's ballrooms.

Through Freddie, Bill met Joe Jenkins and Larry Silvers, who taught at the Fred Astaire studios in Washington, DC. They came up to New York City once a month to take lessons in the English style with Freddie. Bill, Joe and Larry were all nearly the same age and shared a devotion to promoting the English style of dancing. This common bond brought them together.

At the time, there was a small competition scene, with about eight competitions a year throughout the country. Bill began competing with Bobbi as his partner in 1964, attending a competition in Washington, D.C., when she was six months pregnant. Bill and Bobbi did not travel far to compete, hitting about three competitions a year, mostly in the northeast. They also went to the Detroit Star Ball in Michigan because it was a large competition that saw strong attendance from Canadian dancers, who competed in the English style.

Around 1966, Bill and Bobbi began traveling to England to train, because the top English teachers, such as Charles Thiebault, Len Scrivener, Elsa Wells, Benny Tolmeyer, Bill and Bobbie Irvine, Eric Hancocks, Sonny Binick and Peter Eggleton, were to be found there. They went to London with Frank and his dance partner Aleta Marcy. Frank, coming from the United Kingdom, knew London well, and the four of them spent three weeks dancing, training and enjoying the sights. They were in London in July, and a dance event called the Imperial Tea Dance was being held at the Grosvenor House. Bill and Bobbi decided to enter the Professional Basics competition, in which the entrants were judged on their mastery of the basic syllabus figures of the English style.

The day of the event, Bill and Bobbi arrived at the Great Room of the Grosvenor House only to find that the first heat had already been run and they had missed it. Their coach Bobbie Irvine, who was at the event, was upset at their late arrival and asked them what had happened. "Well, in the States, the competitions never run on time so we thought we could show up later than the posted time," Bill explained. Bobbie went to Alex Moore, one of the organizers, and pleaded with him to let Bill and Bobbi dance even though they had missed their first heat. Alex then spoke to the other organizers. After deliberating, they decided that because Bill and Bobbi had traveled all the way from America to dance at the Imperial Tea Dance, they would be allowed to dance in the next heat. Relieved, Bill and Bobbi took the floor. They were recalled into the semi-final. After dancing that round, they got called back to the final. The results were tabulated and then announced: In first place, Bill Davies.