Group Unites Dance Lovers From Various Walks of Life

The members of the Beverly Hills Dance Ensemble are from diverse backgrounds, but when they gracefully dip and turn to the notes of a Fred Astaire medley, they all have one thing in common: their love of ballroom dancing.

The 16-member group, which includes two rocket scientists, four engineers and a private investigator, will perform a tribute to Astaire for the 43rd annual Los Angeles International Folk Dance Festival on Friday night at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion.

Adrienne Folley, an engineer at McDonnell Douglas Co., said her colleagues sometimes think she’s “a bit odd” when they find out about her favorite pastime. “People have an idea that engineers are boring, stoic, couch-potato types. (But) I’ve found a lot of engineers are quite musical,” the West Los Angeles resident said.

Folley and the 15 other men and women who make up the dance team practice their routines every weekend, said Gloria Monaghan, who founded the team in 1974.

The ensemble will perform along with 500 other dancers, singers and folk musicians from all over the world in Friday’s one-night festival, the region’s largest and oldest multi-ethnic stage presentation.

The Astaire tribute that the team will perform is just one of a large repertoire of their routines, Monaghan said. This year’s appearance at the folk dance festival will be the team’s 10th, an achievement that festival producer Irwin Parnes attributed to the group’s versatility, from the Astaire tribute to Austrian folk dancing.

Although none of the members dance for a living, they all get up early every Saturday and Sunday morning to be at the Hollywood Dance Center by 8 a.m. to practice for two hours. They earn money to pay for their authentic-looking costumes and props from competition prizes and performance fees, Monaghan said.

Monaghan, who runs cotillions for hundreds of fourth-graders through 12th-graders in the Los Angeles area every month, said she has found that ballroom dancing continues to appeal to the young and old alike. Her students “come in thinking they want rock ‘n’ roll, and they leave loving the waltz and the tango and the cha-cha.”

All of the ensemble dancers have their own reasons for making room for ballroom dancing in their busy lives.

Folley, 30, who has competed in other types of dancing, said the performing has helped her at work at McDonnell Douglas. “It helps give me the confidence to give presentations and deal with customers,” she said.

Robert Crosby, 29, whom Monaghan described as a former “beach kid,” has danced with the team for 10 years. “When I was a kid, my parents made me go to cotillion,” the blond resident of Pacific Palisades said. “I came back to it in high school. Over the years, it’s been fun, being able to be a part of something very classy and unique.”

James Tang, a 37-year-old customs broker, said it’s the challenge of team dancing that has kept him in the group for seven years. “I like formation dancing because it takes all eight couples to make the dance work. It takes a lot of time and commitment. If you don’t show up, you’re messing up the other seven couples.”

To Jim Kranyak of Van Nuys, 33, the ensemble is just a natural extension of his musical background. His mother was a singer in big bands, and he had training in singing and the piano as a youngster. As an undergraduate at UCLA, he belonged to the social dance club.

Now a computer consultant, Kranyak said the ballroom dancing is “a nice way to combine the dancing, singing and performing.” Besides, he said, he’s a dedicated fan of Astaire and big band music.