‘Blast to the Past’ dance turns the tables on teens

Jessica Garrison

COSTA MESA -- As Carolyn Beach prepared to go out Friday night, her

daughter took one look at what her mother planned to wear, grimaced and

issued a solemn command.

“My daughter told me I couldn’t dress too slutty,” Beach said, as she sat

demurely in a denim skirt and tank top at a cocktail table in the darkly

lit gym at Costa Mesa High School.

The strange role reversal was reproduced throughout Costa Mesa that

night. Parents, giddy as 16-year-olds, preened and posed in front of the

mirror, anticipating the school’s first ever faculty-parent dance.

Students, looking on with a mixture of love and horror, begged their

parents to mind their manners, watch what they said, and for heaven’s

sakes, don’t do that weird dance in front of the English teacher.

“It’s fun. It’s awesome. It’s a blast,” said Joyce Christiansen,

outfitted in a pink poodle skirt and accompanied by her husband, who

looked as if he had just stepped out of the movie “Grease.”

The brainchild of PTA president Sheryl Slaney, the faculty-parent dance

was conceived as a way for the school to make a little bit of money and

offer parents a low-key, fun way to meet the teachers.

The school’s all-faculty band, Stagefright, quickly added the venue to

its world tour schedule this fall (they even put it on their T-shirts.)

And Principal Andy Hernandez turned over the gym, which was decorated

with balloons and posters screaming “Blast to the Past.”

Few teachers seemed to be in attendance, however, a couple of students

showed up to see how their parents were faring. They gushed at how

beautiful the gym looked, how great the band sounded, and how adept the

parents’ dancing moves were, but refused to give their names.

“It would be so embarrassing,” some said of the prospect of their

classmates finding out they had come to the event. “This is a ‘parent’

dance.”

And indeed, with the absence of many of the teachers, parents let loose

and danced the night away.

“There’s no stress here,” enthused Beach, herself a ’74 Costa Mesa High

graduate. “When I was in high school, I always used to worry about

whether people were going to ask me to dance.”

She grabbed husband Steve Quirk’s hand to show that this was no longer a

concern.

But was this dance as fun as those scary, embarrassing dances they

remembered from high school?

Her husband looked at Beach and smiled.

“It’s two different kinds of fun,” he said.