Gary and I made a recent trek down to West Baden, Indiana to the West Baden Hotel Tea Dance. The drive down was gorgeous; a little too cold to spend too much time outdoors, but just right for watching the scenery slip by drinking Starbucks. Ahhhhh.
The venue was simply fabulous, a lovely tiled dance floor topped by a domed ceiling worthy of any sultan. It’s enormous; Gary probably has all the facts in his blog post so I won’t, although I would like to comment about the fireplace. It’s huge. The best part is the gnome at the top. Now I ask you, how many fireplaces have you seen that had its own guardian fire elemental? Very cool.
OK. So we got there, settled into our seas by the floor, and got some tea goodies. I wasn’t a big fan, the cookies were more like round cakes and most of the food was beast infused, and being a veggie there wasn’t a whole lot for me, but since I knew we were eating dinner afterwards no big deal. They did have coffee. I was happy.
I was looking across the expanse of lobby when I saw what looked like a princess gliding across the carpet. Well. She floated right up to us and asked if she could sit at our table. Her name was Betty, and soon her escort joined her, Bill. They were very good dancers and more than that, wonderful people. They had lots of stories and were fun to be with. They are the queen and king of hearts for the dance club in Indianapolis called the Continentals. We’ve been to a couple of their dances, probably the most welcoming dance club we’ve ever attended. Too bad it meets on Sunday…we have to get up the next day so we don’t often attend Sunday dances, and, the Continentals lean towards ballroom.
The tea dance too was mostly ballroom-eque; Gary and I were dying to do a WCS or jive but the music never was quite right for those, but oh well, we ECSed a lot, even threw in some lindy stuff, we did a rumba or two. It was fun to watch the other dancers, they were all good.
We had a lovely dinner afterwards.
The venue was simply fabulous, a lovely tiled dance floor topped by a domed ceiling worthy of any sultan. It’s enormous; Gary probably has all the facts in his blog post so I won’t, although I would like to comment about the fireplace. It’s huge. The best part is the gnome at the top. Now I ask you, how many fireplaces have you seen that had its own guardian fire elemental? Very cool.OK. So we got there, settled into our seas by the floor, and got some tea goodies. I wasn’t a big fan, the cookies were more like round cakes and most of the food was beast infused, and being a veggie there wasn’t a whole lot for me, but since I knew we were eating dinner afterwards no big deal. They did have coffee. I was happy.
I was looking across the expanse of lobby when I saw what looked like a princess gliding across the carpet. Well. She floated right up to us and asked if she could sit at our table. Her name was Betty, and soon her escort joined her, Bill. They were very good dancers and more than that, wonderful people. They had lots of stories and were fun to be with. They are the queen and king of hearts for the dance club in Indianapolis called the Continentals. We’ve been to a couple of their dances, probably the most welcoming dance club we’ve ever attended. Too bad it meets on Sunday…we have to get up the next day so we don’t often attend Sunday dances, and, the Continentals lean towards ballroom.The tea dance too was mostly ballroom-eque; Gary and I were dying to do a WCS or jive but the music never was quite right for those, but oh well, we ECSed a lot, even threw in some lindy stuff, we did a rumba or two. It was fun to watch the other dancers, they were all good.
We had a lovely dinner afterwards.
Driving home I thought about how those tea dances started out to be a way for young people to “get those crazy dances” out of their system, and now they seem so formal. Maybe someday we will be doing our hip hop WCS and people watching will say awe, aren’t they cute doing those old time dances.
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