“T-A-N-G-O. T-A-N-G-O. T-A-N-G-O.”
As she stands in the middle of a circle of dancers inside the Oasis Senior Center on a windy Wednesday evening, Marie King’s eyes dart between their feet and their arms, diligently hovering over them like a hawk. As she watches, she spells out the name of the dance, teaching them to match their steps with the rhythm of her words.
“They’re developing new skills, teaching their body to move in a new way, like a musical instrument, but with their body,” King said.
The 20 people swarming around her have just learned a new dance—the tango. They take each new step with trepidation, nervously counting in their heads. But just as the flash of doubt and panic crosses their eyes, they suddenly find the movement. Each couple begins to breeze by her, their bodies instinctively moving to the beat.
In a few minutes, King has taught about 20 people the basic steps of a tango. She fires up a song on her laptop and the room is filled with the sound of music and shuffling feet as they spin around her.
“They learn one step and then they learn the next, and it goes on and on,” King explained. “Many of the dances have the same step, which gets people dancing faster. They learn more than one dance at a time.”
But at this same time last year, King wasn’t leading a joyful circle of dancers. She was grieving the loss of her husband and learning how to ease back into her life. Just the year before, her son Patrick died after a battle with cancer.
“I just took the months off to grieve and heal,” she said. “I couldn’t do anything else.”
Marie started dancing when she was 36, not the typical age one might associate with a newbie dancer. She immersed herself in the world of ballroom and swing dancing after meeting her husband Dave King, who had been an instructor with Arthur Murray Dance Studios.
Dave was from a long line of dancers in his family, and Marie soon became part of that world.
“I just wanted to start having fun,” she said. “When I met Dave, we would dance when we went out. We decided to start dancing together, doing competitions. When we decided to start the business, he was more serious about it than I was.”But with a background in business, Marie had the expertise necessary to run the kind of company that Dave envisioned. They started in 1995 and went on to teach hundreds of people in Santa Maria how to dance through the Kings of Swing dance studio.
“It was never just a business for us,” Marie said. “Some of our students went on to be our friends for the past 20 years. We wanted to do something good in the community. We wanted to touch people.”
Dave died January 2016, after a long illness. After grieving Dave’s loss for almost a year, and coming off of the loss of her son, Marie said she was ready to return to teaching the classes.
“It was difficult to go to my first dance,” she admitted. “When you lose someone, the first thing anyone wants to say to you is about that, that they’re sorry or they want to hug you. So you’re always reminded of it. It’s hard.”
But she couldn’t stay away from her students forever. Now, with a revamped business, Marie said she is looking forward to continuing the work she and Dave did for 20 years.
In March, Marie once again returned to teaching classes. She teaches weekly beginning and intermediate classes and offers private dance lessons. She also teaches wedding choreography for interested couples. In addition to that, she throws dance parties that serve as practice for people to try out what it’s like to dance at a real social event outside of a classroom.
She said she still finds joy in the satisfaction that comes from helping people who think they can’t dance overcome their insecurities and find the steps.
“A whole new life opens up to them,” Marie said.
Arts and Lifestyle writer Rebecca Rose’s Austrian mother taught her to waltz to “Blue Danube” when she was 5 years old. Contact her at [email protected].
