Modern kids may feel fine free-styling in baggy cargo pants and cammo mini skirts. But even in the hip-hop age there are good reasons for putting on dress shoes and white gloves and mastering social graces and old-school dance steps at the foundation of good comportment.
It can be awkward learning to curtsy and bow, and to make eye contact and small talk. And mastering traditional dances like the waltz and the cha-cha can be tough for fifth- and sixth-grade feet.
Still, the common courtesies learned during Jon D. Williams Cotillions programs are the type that will be useful long after the book is closed on basic reading, writing and arithmetic.
“Good manners define you as a person,” says Shelley Sutton, national coordinator for the Denver-based company that usually runs 14 dance and etiquette programs in Colorado each year.
At the dances held at the Denver Museum of Nature & Science, kids from all over the city are schooled in things like the box step and the proper handling of cutlery at the dinner table by director Ward Sear, who also leads white-water canoe trips in the summer.
Good table manners and good river etiquette? “That’s one of the wonderful things about good etiquette,” Sutton says, knowingly. “It goes everywhere. The guidelines for etiquette are universal.”
Around 8,000 kids dance through 50 programs run by Jon D. Williams Cotillions across the country each year. In Colorado, cotillions are held in cities from Fort Collins to Steamboat Springs.
Jon D. Williams, who heads the company his parents founded in 1949, readily admits he was a reluctant cotillion participant. “It was the ’50s, and there was kind of a stigma. It was not so cool, and, worse, my parents were the instructors.”
Though today’s students might grouse about having to put on dress shoes and sport coats for six Sunday afternoons in a row, statistics suggest that they would do it again if they could. Each student is asked to fill out a survey that asks: Would you like to return next year?
“About 94 percent of the students admit, in the privacy of their own rooms, that they would like to come back again,” Williams says.
Lisa Searles brought her son Zach and his pal Stowe Faircloth, both sixth-graders at Graland Country Day in Denver. The boys typically play football and lacrosse, but they joined the cotillion of their own volition. Twice. “It’s their second year,” Lisa Searles says.
Depending on the location, the cotillion class enrollment is typically at least half public-school students.
Ellie Wroble, 12, who is homeschooled by her mom, Susan, in Park Hill, said the cotillion gave her a chance to catch up with friends from dance class, swim team and Girl Scouts. “I’ve also gotten to meet so many new people. I like how people can learn new dances and you don’t feel stressed. You can mess up and it’s OK.”
Susan Wroble found out about the program at the museum only by chance, and only after there was a wait list for the program near their home. Some people get turned away but only because room size limits class size. The fith- and sixth-grade cotillion tuition is $155, and scholarships are available.
Anicesha Wilson enrolled her 11-year- old son Kii Richards, hoping to boost his social confidence.
“It is something traditional to hold on to in our American culture. I like it, it shows a coming of age,” she says. “I wish I could have done it.”
Kii was reluctant before the first class, but by the time the ’50s Sock Hop party rolled around four weeks into the program, he penciled on a mustache, put a fedora on his head and headed to the ball. At the final dance last weekend at the Hyatt Regency Tech Center, to which he was escorted by his mom, aunt and great grandmother, the Dennison Montessori sixth-grader said he figured he had it all figured out – dancing, table manners, etiquette. “I got the whole thing.”
At the final dance, Joseph Schroer, 10, a fifth-grader at Slavens School, showed his parents, John and Lynda Schroer, how to finesse the steps when it was their turn to dance together.
He made sure his dad’s right hand was placed on his mom’s shoulder blade, not at her waist, and that their clasped hands were stretched out straight at eye level.
John Schroer, looking stunned by his boy’s earlier show-stealing performance of the electric slide, noted that Joe, a football and baseball player, loves a challenge. “He’s never intimidated. He’s just gifted about listening and instructing.”
Chelsea Moham, 11, a sixth-grader at Park Hill School, didn’t know she’d be squeezing cotillion in between flag football, basketball and Girl Scouts until she returned from spending the summer with family in Atlanta.
“I’ve learned to do a lot of cool things,” she said, ticking off the skills and dances she’d learned on her white-gloved fingers. Fox trot. Swing. Electric slide. Waltz. Mexican hat dance. Correct table manners and how to conduct herself in polite company.
She didn’t make a lot of friends in the fleeting moments between spins around the dance floor, but that didn’t matter to Chelsea. “I do it for the dancing.”
