Work That Skirt, Honey!

by Leslie Dotson

Ain't nothing like a good shoe shine, is there? Kevin Tuohy is making a business out of keeping your shoes glistening.

The Verdi Club is a swift step back in time. Swing on!

When I was in college, I used to take ballroom dancing lessons. The waltz, the polka, the merengue and for extra sassiness, we learned the foxtrot. I felt well prepared for any social dancing that would come my way. Then the swing craze hit and I was woefully undereducated in the ways of dance.

To remedy this, I headed off to a local dance studio to learn a few steps and with all the counting and "ball-changes" I was more confused than enlightened. Worse yet, I forgot everything after a month at a friend’s wedding and I was more concerned about my feet than chatting with the poor sod who asked me to dance.

So, I decided to get control over the situation and seek professional help—I went to Work that Skirt, the most glamorous and really best way to learn how to swing in San Francisco.

I took one of the most popular dance classes offered by Work that Skirt called the "Street Swing" class. Street Swing is a style coined by Work that Skirt and is based around the basic "two-step." They swear that after one lesson of Street Swing, you will be able to go out onto the dance floor and not relive any nightmares of slow dancing from your high-school prom.

So I showed up at 333 Ritch Street, had a cosmopolitan to steady myself and awaited the lesson along with several other couples. At 7:30 PM Dana rounds up her shy students from the edges of the dance floor and starts the ball rolling.

You take one look at Dana and you know you came to the right place. Dana is truly the reason we all want to swing dance. She dressed like she just got out off the swing shift making airplane bombers, with her hair poufed into full Betty Grable glamour and lips painted ripping red accenting a full smile. Dana is one cool lady.

Dana started Work the Skirt in 1993 along with three other swingers who simply fell in love with the 1940s and found swing dancing to be a key expression of this retro life. And who could blame them for that? Dana and her friends first started dancing at Club Deluxe, the bastion of retro in SF, performing moves created from watching hours of 1940s musicals. People noticed them and wanted to learn their eye-catching turns and aerials. And six years later, Dana is still burning up the dance floor with more flair and panache than one usually sees in the years of insipid Gap ad wannabes. She is the real deal, honey, and don’t you forget it!

Anyway, back to my class. Dana and her partner, John, begin by showing us the basic steps and before the end of the first hour, I’m doing such startling moves like "the pretzel" and "the backstabber"—don’t worry—neither involve blood wounds or yoga lessons. And, honestly, it wasn’t hard! I even looked around at the other couples and they looked quite decent—like they had been doing it for ages. Work that Skirt should be canonized for making this one couple dance so decently by the end of the night--truly, if you saw the way these jokers danced at the beginning, you’d know it was a miracle.

Work that Skirt also offers several other dance lessons as well, such as Dean Collins style and the popular Lindy Hop, named after Charles Lindberg’s famous flight from New York to Paris France. They even offer a special class for engaged couples called Mr. and Mrs. Swing—trust me, grooms-to-be, this is the most painless way to deal with that first dance. Check the Web site, www.workthatskirt.com for class schedules.

One of the nicest things is that Dana and the other members of Work that Skirt are having so much fun sharing what they love to do with others and making a living doing it. I just hope everyone reading this article is that lucky too.

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