Safwat Gerges said he thanks ABC’s long-running reality series “Dancing with the Stars” for making him cool again.
Gerges, general manager and owner of the Arthur Murray Dance Center in Williston Park, said until the television show the ballroom dancing as taught by his business, was a pastime for seniors only.
“Ballroom dancing 10 or 15 years ago was a taboo. Only grandma and grandpa would do that,” said Gerges. “‘Dancing with the Stars’ affected the business. Ballroom dancing has become the thing to do. You’re a cool person if you can do ballroom dancing.”
Gerges, whose Arthur Murray Center has been part of the community for 32 years, said the new appreciation for ballroom dancing has added excitement to 100th anniversary celebration of Arthur Murray’s and its first dance studio in Manhattan.
Last month, Village of Williston Park Mayor Paul Ehrbar visited Gerges’ dance studio at 433 Willis Ave. to join Gerges in the celebration by declaring an Arthur Murray Day.
The Arthur Murray center in Williston Park currently has 70 active students and Gerges said 33 couples have signed up for lessons in the past month. Couples constitute up to 80 percent of those signing up these days. And Gerges said those mastering ballroom moves are now more typically in their 40s or younger, compared to people in their 60s or older before all those dancing stars stepped in.
“Now we get a lot of younger people who want to learn to do their wedding dances as a real choreographed song. They want to look really good,” Gerges said.
Gerges said the key to their mastery begins the “pasodoble,” a Spanish two-step rhythms that typifies much of the music that traditionally accompanies ballroom dancing.
“The rock beat can lend itself to pasodoble,” said Gerges. “Once people start to get into it, they appreciate the old standards because they see how it really fits.”
The two initial lessons couples take frequently turn into five or 10 lessons as people are drawn to the appeal of ballroom dances from the rhumba and the fox trot to the more demanding mamba and tango.
Internet marketing has increased as a way of drawing younger dancers in to the studios, said Gerges, who owns and operates six locations in New York. In addition to the Williston Park center, he owns Arthur Murray Centers in Manhattan, Bayside, Merrick, Commack and Saratoga Springs. He also owns dance centers in Cairo, Egypt and Dubai.
Gerges said his entry into the business was “a stroke of luck,” stemming from a job search when he was a 25-year-old immigrant from Europe.
A ballet dancer performing in Austria and Germany before coming to the U.S. in 1974, Gerges said he applied to the American Ballet Theater and was accepted, but wasn’t immediately given a place in the company.
So, he said, he responded to an ad seeking a dance teacher (“no experience needed”) and found himself in the Arthur Murray Dance Center in Rego Park.
“I walked in and I saw two people dancing together. I was shocked a little bit,” he said. “But actually I was impressed as I watched that couple dancing.”
He filled out the application, but figured the job wasn’t for someone who had taught ballet.
But the manager, Mande Tanasowski – one of the two dancers Gerges had just observed – followed him out of the studio, brought him back inside and changed his mind.
“I started it. The rest is history,” Gerges said, who has maintained a friendship with Tanasowski ever since then.
One year after he started teaching, the Arthur Murray center in Great Neck needed a manager. Gerges applied, got the job and subsequently bought the studio.
He bought the Williston Park center in 1986 and combined it with the Great Neck location five years later. He gradually acquired the other studios.
Couples usually take an introductory lesson to get them acquainted with the Arthur Murray teaching method and to enable instructors to evaluate the dancers’ abilities.
“Some people have a good sense of rhythm, some don’t,” Gerges said.
The number of classes they ultimately take depends on how many dances they want to learn and how proficient they want to become.
The most proficient students can compete in 10 Arthur Murray competitions around the country annually. An international competition drew 600 people to New York City in March. A competition for Arthur Murray centers in the northeast takes place June 21 through 24 in Boston.
“Anybody from any of the studios can compete,” Gerges said.
In this centennial year, that lineup includes 190 dance centers in the U.S. and nearly 250 worldwide.
For information about dance lessons at the Arthur Murray Dance Center in Williston Park visit www.arthurmurraynyc.com or call 516-248-6430.
Reach reporter Richard Tedesco by e-mail at rtedesco@theislandnow.com or by phone at 516.307.1045 x204
