Dance club brings moves to Gorton Community Center
BY LINDA BLASER lblaser@pioneerlocal.com February 1, 2012 3:08PM
Gurnee residents Nancy and Brian Jermolowicz glide about the dance floor during the Shoreline Dance Club's ballroom dance Saturday night at the Gorton Community Center in Lake Forest. | Eric Davis ~ For Sun-Times Media
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Updated: April 2, 2012 1:56AM
LAKE FOREST — Waltz. Cha cha. Foxtrot. Rumba.
The Shoreline Dance Club will teach these ballroom standards over the next four months to all comers at its monthly dances at the Gorton Community Center in Lake Forest.
And instructor Bob Urbon, a long-time Chicago-area dance instructor, welcomes them with open arms.
“You’re getting out and meeting other people and learning something new. And it’s fun,” he said.
The Shoreline Dance Club, which has met everything third Saturday of the month for over a decade at Gorton, kicked off its 21st year last month.
Despite the snow and cold, couples from all over Lake County make their way to the dance.
For many, it’s just part of their life.
Club President Paul Bettendorf and his wife Carol rarely miss a dance.
They joined the club with neighbors a few months after it started in January of 1991, making the Lake Bluff couple the longest-serving members.
“We’re probably the closest to charter members as you can get,” Paul Bettendorf said.
While the Bettendorfs come for the dancing — they like the foxtrot, waltz and tango — they stay for the camaraderie.
“There’s a core of people that have become pretty good friends,” Paul Bettendorf said.
Diane and John Zitkus of Mundelein are among those friends.
The Zitkuses, who joined the Shoreline Club in 1991, rarely miss an opportunity to dance.
“We go every weekend somewhere and during the week we go to a practice dance,” said Diane Zitkus. While Diane serves as the Shoreline Dance Club’s secretary, her husband John heads up Dance World, another Chicago-area ballroom dance club, as president.
Although they dance a lot — anywhere they can drive to in one hour, the Zitkuses don’t dance competitively.
“It’s strictly social,” Diane said. “The dance community is big, but no matter where we’re going we know a lot of people.”
Getting out and meeting others is what spurred the Mundelein couple to start dancing more than a dozen years ago.
“Our last daughter finally went off to college when we looked at each other and said, ‘What are we going to do now?’” Diane recalled.
They signed up for local park district ballroom dance lessons and were hooked.
“You don’t know if you’ll like it unless you try it. We tried it and found out we’re good at it,” Diane said.
The health benefits provide an added incentive to continue.
“There have been many articles in medical journals about the benefits of dance,” said dance instructor Urbon. “It’s an aerobic exercise, but not high impact.”
That’s one of the reasons Diane Zitkus likes dancing so much.
“There have been studies that show it prevents dementia,” she said. “It’s a mind-body thing.”
She even likens buying dance shoes to picking out a good pair of running shoes.
“This is our sport,” she said.
And there are other perks.
“We’re a big hit at weddings,” she said. “I have no idea what we’d do without dancing. We’d be bored.”
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