The Ritz Dance Performance, June 1978
Story written by Rick Archer

What has to be the single most embarrassing moment of my life took place at a long lost Disco here in Houston known as the Ritz back in June, 1978. 

I have never felt so humiliated in all my life as I was that night.

Let us return to those glorious days of yesteryear in the heyday of the Disco Era.  Saturday Night Fever had debuted in November 1977.   In just a few short months, Disco Fever had exploded like a supernova.  Disco was Hot Hot Hot!  

The Pistachio Club had been Houston's most popular Disco in early 1978, but surely entrepreneurs took note of those teeming masses of dancers and decided the time was right to open more dance clubs. 

The hottest Disco of all was the brand new Ritz.  Located on Westheimer in Highland Village a mile from the Galleria, The Ritz featured the finest technology seen to date in Houston. Someone had spent a fortune to create the largest dance floor, the best sound system, and the most elaborate lighting system Houston had ever seen.

The Ritz was now the place to be.  Many of Houston's best dancers had deserted the Pistachio Club to become regulars at the fabulous Ritz.

SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER

I had inadvertently stumbled into a job as a Disco Dance Teacher back in October 1977.  I began taking classes at Stevens of Hollywood to learn more about partner dancing, something I knew nothing about.  A kind lady named Dorothy Piazzos noticed that I picked the steps up quickly, so I mentioned the footwork was familiar to me since I taught line dances. 

It turned out the owner, Mr. Lance Stevens, needed a disco teacher because his instructor had quit.  Mr. Stevens hated Disco music and was more than happy to find someone who would teach the class for him.  As a hobby, I had been taking Disco line dance classes steadily for the past four years.  I knew every dance in the book.  Bus Stop, LA Freeway, Electric Slide, the Freeze, Jungle Boogaloo, Four Corners, you name it.  I had already taught line dance classes at two other places, so I had experience too.  Although I wasn't the most talented dancer in the world, I was definitely qualified for the job. So I signed on to teach a Disco Line Dance class at Stevens of Hollywood to 15 people one night a week.  Such an auspicious start!

What neither Mr. Stevens nor I ever expected of course was the two-ton monster around the corner known as Saturday Night Fever.  Can you say 'Tidal Wave'?

Saturday Night Fever hit Houston one month after I started my job.  The movie arrived with minimal fan fare.  Still, I was excited.  Disco was my first love and here was a movie about the dancing.  I remember noticing it in the paper the morning it came out.  Curious, I took off work a little early to see the movie the day it debuted.

I was practically the only person in the theater, but that didn't keep me from thinking the movie was pretty good.  Still, I never expected the world was going to go nuts.  Nor did I expect this movie would change the course of my life.  But it did.  I was in the right place at the right time.  I went from teaching one class per week to teaching 15 classes per week practically overnight.

Soon after the movie's release, hundreds of students began to bombard Stevens of Hollywood for lessons.  The phone would not stop ringing.  Like I said, Mr. Stevens couldn't stand Disco.  Rather than teach the classes himself, he kept scheduling more classes for me.   Those Beginner classes turned into Intermediate classes.  The Intermediate classes spawned Advanced classes, and more Beginner classes were starting weekly... all this for a young man who knew nothing more than Line Dances.

As you might gather, the sensation caused by Saturday Night Fever created a horrible 'Peter Principle' situation for me.  Instantly I was propelled many levels past my level of competence.  I was overwhelmed, but I was game.  I liked the music and I liked the dancing.  I did everything I could to learn more line dances plus I started teaching freestyle... line dance moves without structure.   It got close a few times, but I always managed to stay one step ahead of the students I was teaching.

My Achilles Heel was partner dancing.  Partner dancing had been more or less non-existent on the American Dance Scene since the Fifties.  Instead a never-ending barrage of fad dances like the Twist, Frug, Cool Jerk, Monkey, Hitchhike, Pony, Mashed Potato, Watusi et al had kept teenagers busy through the Sixties and most of the Seventies.  But Saturday Night Fever changed all that.  SNF brought partner dancing back with a passion. 

Everyone was inspired to learn how to partner dance like John Travolta!  My students begged me for more partner dancing.  The problem was, I barely knew any partner dancing!

Mr. Stevens showed me a simple dance based on East Coast Swing footwork.  It used Swing footwork one step per beat.  This 4-beat dance moved too slow, so I developed something similar to Aggie Jitterbug that shortened the basic pattern down to 3 beats.  Calling it the New Yorker, my modest invention worked for a while, but I was never satisfied.  I could see the advanced dancers in the clubs were using something far more sophisticated.  Known as the Latin Hustle, or Hustle for short, this beautiful dance with its syncopated timing was far too difficult for me to pick up just by watching.  I wished I could learn how to dance it.

I told Mr. Stevens about the Hustle, but either he didn't know or didn't care what I was talking about.  I didn't know where else to learn the Hustle, so I stayed in the dark and cursed my bad luck.  Instead I made up moves based on what little I did know or saw on the dance floor.

Although I was actually teaching partner dancing in my classes, I was usually barely one step ahead of my own advanced students.  I was in constant fear that one day my students would realize I didn't know any more than they did.  More often than not, I would learn a pattern on Monday to teach my advanced students on Tuesday... I was always winging it. 

This practice isn't quite as unheard of as you think.  The secret of my success could be indelicately described as "Fake it till you Make it".  Every career has moments where an opportunity arises before you are completely ready.  You can either sit back and wait for a safer chance to come along or you can hit the hole and go. 

But sometimes when you play Fake It Till You Make It, you get burned.  The following story serves as a perfect example. 

I wasn't stupid.  I knew my own dancing didn't remotely compare to the best dancers I watched in the clubs on a regular basis.  I knew I was in way over my head.  However I didn't see that I had much choice. 

At the time I felt like keeping my job depended on it.  I have little respect for people who abuse their power in this way, but I can tell you from this experience, using a job as leverage is a very powerful tool.

I have never understood his motives. Mr. Stevens had to know he was throwing me to the wolves.  My best guess is that he was being paid and needed another couple to fill the bill.  Nothing else makes sense unless you accept the darker thought that he deliberately set me up.

As I stated previously, Saturday Night Fever had come out of nowhere to create a huge demand for Disco classes.  Although I never saw this chance coming ahead of time, once I saw the Wave, I grabbed my surfboard and paddled just as hard as I could.  I made a conscious decision to accept every new opportunity that came along and see where this magic carpet ride would take me.  Up till now, my gamble to accept every new opportunity had worked like a charm.

I had not been foolish to accept the risks. As long as I was allowed to evolve at a gradual pace, I was okay.  After all, I knew more about what I was teaching than 98% of my students.  However the Ritz was far too big a huge leap for me.  This was one challenge that I definitely wasn't ready for.  When the Ritz Invitation came along, I had been teaching for six months.  My skills at partner dancing were very limited.  Furthermore I had never performed at anything in my life.

At this point I was still teaching line dances and Disco Freestyle. Only recently had I begun to learn how to partner dance. I really wasn't much better than the next guy at partner dancing, yet here I was committed to perform at the Ritz.

What Mr. Stevens was asking me to do - PERFORM IN FRONT OF HOUSTON'S BEST DANCERS - was way over my head considering my limited natural dance ability and even more limited experience with partner dancing.   Making matters worse, I had no one to turn to for help.

I didn't know how to lead!  That was my weakness. Advanced Disco Dancing called for lightning-quick leads.  First these leads were learned from a teacher.  Then the leads were honed through steady practice until the dancer acquired what is known as 'muscle memory'.  

I had never received any training in how to lead.  Nor was this something I could acquire overnight.  Mr. Stevens didn't lift a finger to help me.  What little I knew was stuff I had figured out on my own.  What else was I supposed to do?

Wake me up... This has to be a nightmare!    But it wasn't...

To tell you I was scared out of my wits would be a vast understatement. I had only two weeks to prepare.  The finest dancers in Houston would be watching.

I was in way over my head.  I was drowning.

PREPARATION

I asked a lady named Suzie Mathews to be my partner.  Suzie and her husband Chic were Ballroom students of Mr. Stevens. 

Suzie was also interested in Disco dancing, but her husband could not have cared less.  So Suzie signed up for my Disco classes by herself.  I quickly realized she was a good dancer and didn't have a partner, so I naturally began to use her to demonstrate patterns in my classes.  Almost immediately Suzie became more of an assistant than an actual student.  Come to think of it, Suzie probably knew more about dancing than I did at the time. 

Suzie's good looks and dancing ability made her a good choice to be my partner, but unfortunately I soon discovered she had no more experience at performing than I did.  Nor did she have a clue how to teach me to lead. 

Now we were both in over our heads!  

Suzie was willing to stay the course, but she was just as worried as I was.  In fact, I decided she was a worrier by nature.  Suzie was always in a semi-state of panic over our impending doom.  As we tried to prepare, Suzie could never relax and completely concentrate because her fears kept nagging at her.  I felt like I was the one who needed encouragement, but she needed it more than I did!  Weren't we a pair?

It was the blind leading the blind, a phrase that would soon come to have a far more serious connotation. 

Making things tougher, scheduling time to practice wasn't easy.  I still had a full-time job during the day.  Using every small moment to practice, slowly but surely Suzie and I rehearsed various patterns.  We didn't have any help, so it wasn't easy.  I was learning stuff on the fly.  Finally we decided on a routine that was completely choreographed.  Since I didn't know how to lead, we had to memorize the order of everything we were going to do.  What other choice did we have?

Considering how little experience we had, it was a good routine.  I was especially good at acrobatics, so we planned to go thin on the dancing and thick on the lifts, drops, and flips.   Dance Acrobatics are so entertaining that our lack of dance background could actually be disguised.  I was very encouraged by this realization.

However, we weren't out of the woods yet.  Not by a long shot.  We had invested almost all of our two weeks racking our brains for material and practicing the patterns by themselves. 

Now it was time to integrate all the separate patterns into a dance routine. That's when we made the painful discovery that neither of us could remember the damn pattern!    As an unfortunate byproduct of our inexperience, neither of us had known how much time it would take to memorize the routine.  We had allocated too much time to development.  This made us even more nervous because we could see we were quickly running out of time.  We had two days left to get it together.

THE PERFORMANCE AT THE RITZ

The fateful night arrived.  Suzie and I met at the Ritz early for our last ditch effort.  We went over to a dark corner and practiced furiously.  That afternoon the patterns had been close to working.  Just give us a little more time!

Then just minutes before we were scheduled to perform, like a miracle Suzie and I did the routine from start to finish for the very first time!  Then like Magic we did it right a second time!  Two times in a row! 

There wasn't time for a third try... it was just seconds before game time. Still, I was very encouraged.  It was clear to me that we now had a fighting chance of success.  Against all the odds, maybe we could pull this thing off after all.

We heard our names called.  Nervous beyond any anxiety I have ever felt before in my life, I walked with Suzie out onto the enormous dance floor.

There we stood all alone in the middle of a gigantic dance floor with the brilliant spotlights beaming down on us.  The Ritz was packed.  There were easily 400 people there that night to witness my performance.  The pressure on me was intense.

I was disconcerted to realize they could see me, but I couldn't see them!

The Ritz had a lowered ceiling in the seating area and a raised ceiling on the dance floor.   The lighting in the seating area was kept pretty dark while the powerful lights made it so bright out there on the floor that there was only blackness beyond. 

400 people surrounded us from a darkened perimeter.  It was weird that we could not even see the audience.  Then I looked again and saw something white.  That is when I realized that although I could not see anyone's face, I could see their eyes peering at us from the darkened perimeter!  Too weird. 

I felt like an animal in the jungle about to be attacked. I felt like screaming.

I wanted to throw up.   How on earth did I get myself into this fix?  My nausea was overwhelming.  How was I supposed to smile?  How would I ever be able to perform with this kind of anxiety?

Suddenly without warning the lights were turned off! 

The Deejay had switched to the dark strobe lighting.  What was he thinking?  The sudden change in lighting literally left us blind.  We had been performing in brilliant light and our pupils were dilated.  Although there was some light from the strobes, it did us no good at all.  Until our eyes adjusted, we were both totally blind.

This disaster happened at a moment where Suzie and I were dancing apart.  We had no connection and I had no idea where she was.  I literally could not see her because the room was thrown into total darkness.   I started to grope for her.  What a time to be playing Blind Man's Bluff! 

Since I didn't know how to lead, I didn't have any way to recreate the routine.  We were only one-third into our performance and my partner had gone psycho. All I could do now was grab Suzie and throw her around in the air.   She was in shock.  What else could I do?

Although I was badly shaken, I could still remember what patterns came next.  I cursed again, this time at my helplessness to rescue the situation.  I did not have the ability to carry out the routine alone.  We finished the act only because I literally manhandled this poor hapless woman for two more painfully long minutes.  A wooden dance dummy would have actually done just as well.

As a comedy dance act, we would have been great.  We were something out of an 'I Love Lucy' episode to be sure.  But these people were expecting a professional dance performance.  No one thought we were funny.  

There were some snickers, but mercifully no one booed us.  I think most people realized we were the victims of the deejay's stupid mistake and cut us some slack.  After all, we had looked pretty good till the lights went out.

The Deejay in the booth above us had sensed that our dancing had gotten the crowd excited.  As a way to enhance our performance, he had decided to switch from the powerful spotlight to the amazing (BUT VERY DARK) strobe light system.  He was obviously new to this performing business himself because he had no idea how much trouble he had caused for us.

Maybe experienced performers could have laughed it off and picked up the pieces, but certainly not us.  We were shaky to begin with.  Once the whole world saw us staggering around like drunken fools, our poise was shattered.

What little confidence we had was completely shattered by the DJ's foolish mistake.  It was a new club.  He probably had no idea what a devastating effect changing the lights would have on us.  But that mistake shot us down. We never had a chance after that.  Once Suzie locked up, there was no hope for recovery.  Our shaky house of cards came tumbling down.

As a result, the 400 best dancers in the city all got to watch me make a complete fool of myself.  Que cera, cera.

Little did I know it at the time, but this ugly moment foreshadowed fifteen years of dance performance disappointments.

Some of the incidents were silly, some were frightening, but they all were embarrassing.  The Ritz Performance was the start of my dance curse.