The Jewish family who owned and ran the place were the best. The old man had his little booth at the door where he sold things like watches and lottery tickets and odd trinkets . It wasn’t about the incongruence of the ‘stuff’ in his booth with a restaurant. It was all about family. The son was one of the finest gentlemen I’d meet. He loved his father. The family truly cared. They cared for their staff too. It had a family feel. I’d see this paraded as marketting on Hollywood as a Jewish schtick but here it really was true. Loving people who cared for the quality of the product, ran a really good ship. They rewarded the good workers and provided a truly fine product consistently that brought in the customers continuously. It’s no small feat. The whole family worked hard. There’s all this anti sémitism today in Canada but there weren’t ‘hand outs’. The Rockefeller’s weren’t giving this family money on the side.There was no easy way. They lived and worked and paid attention. I ‘d learn a lot working for these Jewish businessmen. My dad admired the Jews in business and was glad that I could see the level of excellence they strove for. Dad admired work and frankly I was a good worker. I’d go back to eat at that Pancake House for years after I no longer worked there. I loved that the family welcomed and remembered me. I sometimes feel I could die in some businesses here today and all the owner would do was pick up my wallet. That wasn’t the way of these people in that day. The Fort Garry Pancake House was all about mensch.
At 18 I took my first full time job at Ken Matthew’s Dance School. It was part of my grand plan to be a play wright and director. I figured I ‘d be a dancer and an actor but my dream really was to write and direct a play. I wasn’t interested in movies. I loved live theatre. Then I actually got even more excited at being a playwright because I truly got a rush out of how directors and actors interpreted the set of words in different ways. I was reading a lot of scripts then and going to different plays seeing how the same play was interpreted in different ways and how the director and actor could make a play even more special. . I wanted to write plays and sit back in the hall and watch what people did with my writing. In time I’d see directors and producers and meet the whole cast of characters that revolved around plays and movies. In the end I liked the writer. I loved all the playwrights I met too. Understanding their work I so admired their genius
Writing a play is about creating dialogue for a cast in a three dimensional space with people coming and going at limited entrances and exits. It fascinated me.
Dance became central though. The characters were incredible. I ‘be already spoken about Ken, the owner. Marie - she wasthe one who told us she didn’t wear underwear and her boyfriend lived to drink champagne from her shoes. Antonio and Michelle were everyone’s love birds. Nancy the daughter of the Canadian Champion Ball Room Dancer had been sent out to Ken to learn the trade. Her mother, in apparently classic way for her, a no nosense perfectionist, had told Nancy, « You’d better be able to fuck because you can’t dance.’ The mother daughter lesson thing wasn’t working so Ken was called upon to help. Nancy was driven to spite her mother and show her what a great dancer really could become. In time when she danced with Fern she really did make the Hollywood dancers look like ‘wannabes ».
Baiba would join the group in time. I was a natural, tall, coordinated but always with my face in a book and never thinking dance was where I belonged.
Each hour 4 to 6 couples would dance around the room. Music played continuously ,big band and modern. I heard Santana here before it ever made the radio stations. Dancers spend night after night listening to albums upon albums of music sorting the best. Fern found Santana. Baiba would find the jazz numbers.. I was the only one into folk music and no one danced to folk music. Talk about being an outsider in a dance conversation.
Ken Mathews Dance Studio was on a second floor on Portage Avenue. It had this elegant reception like any corporate office would. Offices were to either side of the reception in front of the long hard wood floored dance hall. Chandeliers hung from ceilings and the tell tale dancer mirror ran the full length of one wall. The staff room was behind reception.
Speakers were embedded in the ceiling and piped the dance music from the stereo at the far end of the room. Other speakers would be brought out for dance competitions and the parties. AT the parties the classic 50’s folding card tables would come out with the table cloth to cover their tackiness and the necessary ambience candle. Folding metal chairs were so uncomfortable that dance was the better alternative. The parties were fun. They’d précéde the later dance nights when the staff would we’d let lose at some local club.
Those were especially fun evenings after the school ‘official’ party. . The better students would often come along We’d end up at a venue where the other dancers from other dance studios and the Royal Winnipeg Dancers and jazz dancers would be partying. We were a small inside crowd and quickly everyone was competing. I enjoyed the wild and crazy free style and with a back ground in martial arts gymnastic and dance could ‘wow’ the crowd. Baiba was the best and when we danced I did what I was supposed to do, showcasing and highlighting her. Ball room dance was a form of dance where the man supported the woman’s ‘shine’. Baiba certainly could shine. When she danced the room would clear and people would literally stand around clapping. No one else could do that.I was the auxiliary and obviously okay but the RWB dancers only stole the show when a few of them would get up and do their ‘group dance’ thing.
In New York I watched Baiba out dance the Broadway dancers when we’d all dance at the Lime light. The only time I’d see her humbled was in London England at the Hammersmith Palli. We were there in that Dancer’s dance hall where the dancers and teachers from all over London and Europe came to dance. You actually had to be a dancer or a teacher to get in and had to show proof. Well the only dance Baiba would do that night was Latin. The caliber of waltz and foxtrot and tango was a whole other level and this was considering we’d been danceing in Montreal before going to London with the Canadian and American champions. That night sure got to Baiba She was on fire.
She studied weekly with Bill and Bobby Irvin the world champions of the day while I took classes with Doreen Key the Latin American World Champion. Each week we worked our various jobs saving our money to train with the best. On Friday and Saturday nights we danced with the Royal Dance Society. That was a different kind of fun. These were all old English very proper and upper class folk who carried on the great tradition of English Dancing. All night we’d dance with some 50 couples at a time following the lead couple like a flock of birds as we’d do the most advanced Quick step and Waltz and Viennese Waltz’s about this grand old dance hall.
Baiba would get her gold medallions from the society and I’d get silvers mostly because I wasn’t so keen on collecting dance awards. At the time I was most impressed with all night jive dancing to the most amazing English Jazz bands of the day. The pace of dancing was as bad as the Latvian polka dancing we’d do with her family at Latvian dances when Paul would find the fastest polkas and we’d loose all the older men and women till we were whirling dervishes. But this was a year or two ahead of this time. When I was 18 we were all just meeting each other at Ken Matthews Dance Studio none of us having a clue where those early days would lead.
Linda was a character. She wore contacts and was always blinking. Men hoped she was coming on to them when she couldn’t see them. But she had the most unforgettably perfect breasts and legs with this delightful blond personality She drove an old Porsche too and was that incredibly smart blond bimbo type that people were forever underestimating. She was a character like everyone else. Unforgettable.
The men dressed in suits. I had to buy two suits at Tip Top Tailor’s down the block where us guys would sometimes join the young salement there at lunch time. The purpose of these meetings was to watch the beautiful shop girls walk by. I think we might have whistled too only to have the girls throw kisses at us.
Our female dance companions were the best dressed women on Portage. Dancers as a rule know how to dress. They have these incredibly fit bodies and choose clothing that accentuates their natural assets. They were also in sales as well as just dancing. In addition to being outrageously glamorous they were all very sexy with hems of day time skirts fashionably just an inch higher, cleavage a half inche more. I laugh today to see girls looking like sluts, especially the Kardashian’s set. The dancers then and the ones I know now know just how to stay off the thin ice. It was terrific to work each day with women who would fit on any boardwalk in Paris or Milan. As men we felt special and proud to be in their company. I’ve never be accused of being a prude but I just feel that the men walking with some of the Hollywood girls today must feel like pimps. That is if they pulled their pants up. I liked that I grew up in an era of Sean Connery and Pierce Brosnan.
The studio made it’s money by offering free lessons. That brought people in the door. Also shows and competitions. Naturally after any man danced with Clarkie, Michelle, Linda or Baiba they wanted to buy a year of lessons just to smell their perfume and hold these exquisite creatures in their arms. Because they were consummate professionals and extremely adept at quick stepping the country clod hoppers rich beyond words would immediately feel they were Fred Astaire because the girls made them feel that way. Meanwhile Antonnio, Fern and (forget his name , became a lawyer) , the gay guy, delightful fun older fellow, and myself would be gliding the awkward ladies about the floor. They were less enamoured with us but very keen to look like Linda and Baiba. It was their true belief that if they could dance with the grace of those girls all the men would rally to them.
The fact is they all were rewarded. We had a psychologist working there when we arrived. He taught a few nights of classes in addition to his day job. He told me « Our students become good at dance. We really do teach them. They really do learn. They may not go onto compete but they get a lot of support and socialization and learn this really great skill. The fact is their confidence and self esteem soar and this spreads through their lives. As a psychologist I’ve seen as great success in people becoming whole in dance studios as I have in the counselling office. »
I’d later think that there was also this body mind factor occurring with dance. The dances were the most advanced movements of the human body conceived by the greatest minds. There was that whole aerobic thing too. But it was way beyond the gym. People were learning one of the greatest ideas of human history. I talked with the students when we danced and they talked with me. It was nothing to being a psychotherapist after all that training. I was always celebrating my students, encouraging them and listening like a priest to their life problems in work and relationship. I was also entertaining them with stories upon stories. Ken Matthew’s was also a very inclusive community.
Very shortly I had a full roster though everyone wanted to be my student. We kept hiring. The trick was getting the morning slots full because everyone wanted the after work spaces. Who wants to dance sexy cha cha cha before the coffee has fully kicked in. The other business matter was return contracts. Clarkie and her man were best at this because they somehow helped people gain the perspective on dance itself, gettting the dance bug across. At first more of their students wanted to become dance competitors though later Baiba’s students would become like this. We more junior dancers would get a contract or two but our students were more likely to pass on. Antonio and Michelle focussed on those rich customers grabbing them as they came in the door and generally keeping them in the studio. It was a whole matter of learning. The young people like Baiba’s brother Paul were sometimes given scholarships simply because they couldn’t pay but their presence was what attracted the older moneyed crowd. Paul was a natural dancer but also the original party animal.
Weekly we’d have a dance with a huge punch bowl which was always a going concern. Ken and Marie wanted a little alcohol in it to give a true dance ambience. Us younger folk expecially Fern and our lawyer to be friend would lace it with extra liquor. Clarkie and her man wouldn’t notice because for the dance they were allowed to take nips as it was a party. . Linda was usually the one to notice that the punch was ‘spiked’. This affected some of the students differently. Antonnio didn’t care as he’d often sell an extra contract to an amorous man convinced he’d become Rudolf Vanlentino thanks to his glamorous teacher. The lonely librarian with a bit of life now desired hotly by one of the other students would want Michelle to sell her another contract because Mr. Hay had so helped her understand her life and what she needed to do to get a man.
Wedding bells followed dance studios along with freed up wild women and wild men who came to realize that it hadn’t been them but their lack of confidence that held them back. They’d go off to join in the great thing called the ‘60’s’ getting new clothes and hair cuts. The girls would often take the students out for ‘remakes’ while Antonnio more than once took men downstairs to the Tip Top Tailors to get them into suits from the present century. Many a disco god or goddess would eventually come out of Ken Matthews. Baiba would eventually be the greatest dancer the studio knew making Clarkie a bit jealous as she’d held that role before Baiba spent the year training with the world champion. Nobody could compete with our Ice Capade star but his alcoholism just progressed while Fern became the male sensation.
The lovely gay man stayed. He said he loved his life and loved his work at the dance studio and he loved his students.Some would stay with him decades. He’d carved a niche for himself and was happy. Baiba and I would visit his apartment he’d had for a decade or more and get a glimpse of what really was a satisfied older bachelor. His books and movies and the endless albums of dancers and closets full of costumes.
I loved them all and for the next 5 years would have countless adventures and experiences with Ken Mathew’s Dance School as the common theme.
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I was one of the students at Ken Matthews's studio in the early 60s. Loved the lessons, and my teacher "Vic Antonio" was very patient with his shy, overweight student. With my instructor, Vic, I actually got to do a "demonstration" Cha-cha in the ballroom at the Royal Alex one memorable evening.
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