‘Dancing with the King’ helps teach young people about ballroom dance and Elvis
The event raises money to get ballroom dance lessons into local schools
TUPELO, Miss. (WCBI) – Celebrities from across the region are lacing up their dance shoes and making last minute preparations for an event that helps teach youngsters about ballroom dancing and the king of rock and roll.
WCBI’s Allie Martin is part of this year’s “Dancing with the King’ and gives us a sneak peek of his routine, and tells us how the event helps young dancers. For about two months now, on most Tuesday and Thursday evenings,
I have been spending an hour or two at the Dance Studio of Tupelo, learning a ballroom dance routine to “One Sided Love Affair,” a song off of Elvis’ first RCA album.
My pro dance partner is Sara Wood, who has been dancing since she was 16 and recently became an instructor.
Our dance is a single-time swing, with a lot of other styles thrown in.
Our first lessons concentrated on the basics.
“We worked on an underarm turn, and inside turn, from there and built off of that,” Wood said.
My routine will be featured in the celebrity dance competition for “Dancing with the King.” The event, which features ballroom dance routines to Elvis songs, raises money to help bring ballroom dance lessons into local schools, like Plantersville Middle School.
Sara helps teach ballroom dance in local schools. Learning multiple routines for ‘Dancing with the King’ is a lot of hard work, but Sara says it’s all worth it to bring ballroom dance to students and see them develop an interest in the art form.
“It’s showing dance to kids who may have never tried it, because, ‘that’s weird.” Then they kind of see it, they get to know us and see it’s not as weird as it seems. It is a little different, we don’t generally go up and dance with someone we’ve never seen before, it helps kids learn how to socialize with everyone,” she said.
The celebrity dance competition takes place Friday evening.
For information on the event, go to dancingwiththeking.com.
