“Alright people, let’s dance!”
At 7:30 p.m. on a Monday, Andrej Hacke, an instructor for Princeton Ballroom Dance Club (PBDC), plugs his phone into the speaker of the Group Fitness Room in Dillon Gymnasium. Cha-cha-cha music reverberates off the walls of the studio, signaling the start of the group lesson. Club members — some taking a second to put on their black or beige dancing heels — line up in three rows facing the mirror.
As the lesson starts, Hacke reminds his students to straighten their legs as soon as they touch the floor, to face their chests to their partners at all times, and to move cleanly and crisply to the music’s rhythm.
“From the beginning to the end of practice, we need to apply our technique to our routine,” Hacke said.
For four decades, PBDC, a sports club under Campus Rec, has served as both a social and competitive organization that brings together beginners and experienced dancers alike. The club was founded by Neil Clover, who served as an instructor for the club and taught a course in ballroom dance at the University for seven years.
The current instructor, Hacke, is a four-time Slovakian National Champion who began teaching the club this fall semester. His son Sam Hacke, a twelve-time U.S. National Champion, also started teaching the club last spring, focusing on the Standard dance style.
Despite his attention to detail, Hacke’s lessons are designed to accommodate dancers of all skill levels. In fact, a vast majority of PBDC members did not have prior ballroom dancing experience before joining the club.
“I’m usually busy teaching private lessons, so these groups are something different,” Hacke said. “I like to work with young people and see how they react. Back in Slovakia, we only taught kids and young adults.”
Depending on a dancer’s experience level, they are classified into different categories following the international competing standard: Newcomer, Bronze, Silver, Gold, and Open.
Wyndham Freeman ’26, president of PBDC and a Bronze level dancer, was involved in the club for only a year before stepping into the leadership role. He also played a part in the search process for professional instructors to lead PBDC’s practices.
“If we were a soccer club, [we wouldn’t] need instructors, because they’ve been playing soccer their whole lives,” Freeman noted. “But in ballroom dance, you really need instructors, because nobody here is good enough to actually teach a real, drawn-out, multi-week lesson.”
After the warm-up, Hacke splits the dancers into two groups, leaders and followers, lining them up facing each other.
“Small details enhance your level of connection with your partner,” he said. “The leader must know what the follower is doing.”
With this, he instructs a student partner to guide his hands to the right spot to facilitate a turn.
“Bring me there, bring me there … thank you,” he said, with an interactive sense of humor.
For Anlin Kopf ’25, who also dances for Más Flow and KoKo Pops, the partner dynamic is key to ballroom dance.
“You physically have to connect, and you have to communicate,” Kopf said. “Sometimes we’ll learn a step, and then you realize that to do it, you have to spin all the way around, and people start to lose orientation and get dizzy,” Kopf said.
Kopf has been involved with PBDC since her first year at Princeton and has progressively held the positions of officer, general officer, president, and treasurer. Unlike most of the club members, she joined with prior experience.
“My grandmother used to do [ballroom dance], so when we would go visit her house, I would go learn,” Kopf said. “I have this really strong nostalgic connection to it.”
Kopf’s dance partner, Mehmet Tuna Uysal, is a sixth-year graduate student in the electrical engineering department. Together, they compete in the silver category.
Uysal noted the unique nature of dancing with a partner and the coordination it requires.
“This dimension [of connection] and waiting for each other’s signals while dancing grows over time,” he said.
Uysal, like Kopf, is not a newcomer to the ballroom scene. In his undergraduate years at Yale University, Uysal decided to pick up ballroom after observing a group of people enjoying themselves while dancing outside. After arriving at Princeton, he joined PBDC to continue his passion.
“In Princeton, graduate students’ daily experiences [are] their departments, their labs, or their seminars. It’s a pretty focused environment,” Uysal explained. “So I think having the chance to be somewhere else with people doing entirely different things is valuable to expand the spirits that you interact with at Princeton.”
At the end of Hacke’s 45-minute beginner lesson, he played Usher’s “Yeah!” The song has a tempo suitable for cha-cha-chá, leading Hacke to challenge the class to dance to it. The advanced lesson began after a break.
The club has a community-facing component as well. PBDC is preparing for its annual Princeton Ballroom Dance Competition, which is set to take place in Dillon Gym on Dec. 7. This event has previously welcomed up to 100 entrants, seven judges, and one head judge. Participants hail from private dance studios, universities in the New York and New Jersey areas, and East Coast ballroom dancing schools.
PBDC members have also attended other competitions at Rutgers University, the University of Pennsylvania, and Carnegie Mellon University.
“You basically go and you get to dance all day, which is super fun,” Kopf said. “You [also] get to watch other people dance, especially the people who are really good and compete at super high levels. And you get to get dressed up and look pretty and wear sparkly dresses.”
Beyond competitions, PBDC upholds the communal aspect of ballroom dancing through social dances. Earlier this semester, the club organized an open dance event where Freeman led a workshop on Jive, another dance in the International Latin style.
Finding a suitable balance between the social and competitive sides of ballroom dance has been on the top of Freeman’s priorities.
“I think the club culture definitely is not very competitive. On the one hand, that means there’s no pressure. Nobody’s expecting people to not make any mistakes,” Freeman said. “However, as somebody who does like to compete, it takes away a little from the seriousness and commitment,” noting that some participants are less likely to show up to lessons and events.
However, Uysal also sees the benefits of this stress-free environment.
“Certainly, the aspect of being open to all is foremost. Some people may only be interested in the social aspect, and some people might want to improve their technique a little more. It’s good to have both of them,” he noted.
“I just want people to know that this idea of ballroom as a kind of an elitist sport is not true,” Freeman said. “A lot of adults later in their lives want to take on dance, but it’s super expensive. At college, you get a good price for the lessons, and everybody’s very welcoming, even if you know nothing.”
Kopf echoed this sentiment, believing that ballroom has many bright years ahead of it.
“I think there’s this common conception of ballroom dancing as old and dying, but it’s really not,” she said. “The community, especially the intercollegiate community, is really, really vibrant.”
Angela Li is a staff Features writer for the ‘Prince.’
Please send any corrections to corrections[at]dailyprincetonian.com.
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