The Dancing Schools of Baltimore’s Jewish Society Part 3

Article by Gil Sandler. Originally published in Generations – 2004: Recreation, Sports & Leisure. This particular issue of Generations proved wildly popular and is no longer available for purchase.

Sidebar: Learning to Dance
Missed the beginning? Start here.

In his eighties, Baltimore’s Lester Levy reminisced about his life and times. The following excerpts describe his first efforts at dancing school.

I doubt if any of you ever went to a mixed dancing school. [My sister] Selma and I did, where the general form of instruction was grounded in so-called “ball-room dancing.” Our first class was on the second floor of a building in the vicinity of Maryland Avenue and Biddle Street. It was known as Heptasoph’s Hall and run by a Mr. Ball.

The class – the average age of whom was seven or eight – met once a week in the afternoons. I remember one detail and Selma reminds me of another: (1) the clumsiest child at school was a fat little boy named Reuben Oppenheimer [who married Selma in 1922]; and (2) I was elected to dance a “sailor’s hornpipe” before the pupils and their parents…

It was during the winter [of 1911-12] that we became part of Mr. Tuttle’s dancing class. Among other things, we had a dancing class to which some two- or three-dozen boys and girls belonged, and we would go out with different girls or boys each week to the class. There was no such thing as keeping steady company. At fifteen, I was beginning to feel that I was growing up…boys were more important to me than girls, for that was my shyest period, and even at dancing school I hardly wanted to hold a girl’s hand.”

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