Dance steps to success.

Byline: Karen McCowan The Register-Guard

After seeing the 2004 Richard Gere film "Shall We Dance," Pleasant Hill Middle School teacher Mary Stevenson decided to add a ballroom dance segment to the sampler of elective mini-courses offered to the school's seventh-graders.

They proved as enthusiastic as the New York students portrayed in the 2005 documentary "Mad Hot Ballroom," scheduling a winter formal dance and begging Stevenson to teach them to waltz. When her students entered high school this fall, Stevenson moved up right along with them. Her semester-long class, "Two Left Feet," is a hot property: The class is full and has a waiting list.

Last week, this semester's 26 students took a field trip to Eugene's Staver Dance Sports. The studio teaches dance for both social and competitive purposes - ballroom dance is on track to become an Olympic event, owner Linda Staver said.

As they rocked, stepped and spun through Staver's lesson on the Hustle, Stevenson's high school students modeled confidence and social ease for a group of McKenzie Middle School students just learning ballroom dance.

More than 50 students lined up in stocking feet on the gleaming birch floor, girls in one line, boys in another. At Staver's instruction, they paired off, one boy meeting one girl in the center of the room. The numbers weren't quite even - 29 girls to 23 boys.

"Girls love to dance, but for some guys, it tests their manliness," Stevenson said.

One of her students, Jeff Brink, was once a case in point.

"I didn't think I'd want to do it, because it was a dance class," said Brink, 14.

Then he went to a cousin's wedding and witnessed some of the benefits that come to men who know how to dance.

"My cousin was like, real good - he could do lifts and stuff," Brink said. "I saw that it was fun."

His friend Zak Circle, also 14, said learning to dance has transformed the once-awkward experience of attending school dances.

"It gave us more confidence to be able to dance in front of people and not be afraid," he said.

Still, there was a bit of nervous tittering Tuesday as Staver taught the newly paired partners the "left, rock-step, right" of the Hustle.

"In order to make this work, we have to have what's called `frame and connection' - how you hold your partner," the veteran teacher told the students. "You do it with a little bit of elasticity and stretching. And push into your partner a little bit, so your arms aren't spaghetti."

By the time Staver added music - Jamiroquai's up-tempo "Cosmic Girl" - some of the McKenzie students were joining the older Pleasant Hill dancers in adding flourishes such as spins and turns.

While Stevenson's students earn a fine arts credit for the dance class, she is talking with the school's physical education teachers about offering credit there, as well.

"These guys are moving for 40 minutes," she said. "They're getting their heart rates up."

Meanwhile, they learn something more immediately valuable to teenagers: social confidence.

"They're learning to make eye contact, to socialize," Stevenson said.

"It teaches respect, manners, courtesy," agreed McKenzie Middle School teacher Rhonda Fox, who coincidentally also began teaching ballroom dance about two years ago.

"It teaches healthy touch of the opposite sex. It's really great exercise. And it's something that's fun to do - the kids do love music, and they like to dance."