So you think you can dance?

For the sixth-grade students at Ephraim Curtis Middle School who are taking ballroom dancing instruction in the school’s cafeteria on Friday nights, the lessons they are learning about self-confidence and self-esteem are proving to be a little more important than just learning “moves like Jagger.”

For over 25 years, Sudbury resident and former Curtis principal and accomplished dance instructor Paul Lamoureaux has been teaching ballroom dancing at Curtis, but also imparts his wisdom of “life skills” to his students to help them overcome the social awkwardness and self-consciousness experienced by many, if not all, 11- and 12-year-old boys and girls.

“The dancing is a means to the end,” said Lamoureaux. “I’m trying to help them be more social and save them embarrassment in social situations. I’m teaching them social etiquette, but weaving it into the dance lessons so that they don’t know that’s the goal of their instruction.”

Lamoureaux's background gives him solid ground upon which to teach. He holds bachelor and graduate degrees in education, and was a teacher at the elementary and junior high school levels. His mother was also a school teacher and a dance instructor. When Lamoureaux reached his teens, he began teaching dancing for his mother, and continued to teach as a college student at Boston University.

As a young dance instructor, Lamoureaux found himself in demand by parents of Curtis students who asked him to teach ballroom dancing to the students at the school. His roots at Curtis include a year as interim principal in 2008, during which time he also served as the school’s ballroom dance instructor.

“I had a great time as principal,” he said. “I was the principal teaching my own kids in dancing. I remember I was in the corridor waiting to go into a classroom to talk to a teacher and I’m standing there and there were some kids from the seventh and eighth grades coming down the corridor and we started doing the Cotton-Eyed Joe in the corridor. Other kids were trying to find out what was going on and I heard the kids who had been dancing say afterwards, ‘Oh, it’s just our principal dancing in the halls.’

“Originally, the Curtis parents’ group sponsored the idea of my teaching ballroom dancing and they formed the dance committee. At that time, we had seventh- and eighth-graders and we had an adult dance group, too.

“But as time went on, the seventh and eighth graders started doing different things and I ended up teaching just the sixth-graders.”

Lamoureaux places great emphasis and thanks for the hard work and efforts of the dance committees and the parent chaperones over the years. This year's Sudbury Junior Dance Committee is made up of parent volunteers Christine Hogan, Lisa Nigrelli, Amy Paquette, Debbie Hurtig, Cindy Brindisi, Pam DiPietro, Kara Forde and Asha May, all who work tirelessly to ensure that Curtis’ Friday night ballroom dancing lessons run smoothly. The lessons are held on six Fridays over a course of three months.

The next lesson is Dec. 2, and the final two lessons are on Dec. 16, at which a party will be held for everyone.

“We have parents who work very hard with this program,” said Lamoureaux. “Many see ballroom dancing at Curtis as a rite of passage.”

Two lessons are taught on Friday nights; each lesson is one-hour apart. The boys and girls are separated into four groups, and the groups are rotated each week so that everyone has an opportunity to meet and dance with new people outside of the group of friends with whom students may associate during school hours. At the beginning of each lesson, the boys are seated on one side of the cafeteria and the girls are seated opposite the boys on the other side. Lamoureaux begins each “commencement night” by asking his students why they are in attendance. The answers he receives range from “We’re here to dance” or “We’re here to learn good manners.”

“I tell them they already know good manners, but my job is to teach them when to use those good manners,” he said.

“In my opinion, it’s no different than when we went to dances where boys would go to one side and girls would go to the other side and then look at each other and not know what to do next,” said Lamoureaux. “I demonstrate the ways that are appropriate and inappropriate ways to ask a girl to dance, and then pretty soon, the appropriate way becomes second nature to the boys.”

Lamoureaux also doles out sound advice to the girls that they should never refuse to dance with a boy but that they should always accept an invitation to dance with enthusiasm.

“I tell the girls they should say ‘I’d be delighted’ when a boy asks them to dance,” he said. “My greatest focus is consideration for one another. We are teaching in a supportive and safe environment that these boys and girls can take a risk in a safe environment and they won’t be rejected.

“I think that some people may think I’m just basically running a record hop and it isn’t like that at all. The lessons are structured and they have a purpose."

Ethan Beatty, a 12-year-old who was quick to state his mother signed him up, felt a bit awkward his first night.

“It was awkward,” said Ethan. “But Mr. Lamoureaux taught us how to ask a girl to dance. We say to the girl we ask, ‘May I have this dance?’ and he taught us how to present our partner to the adult chaperones. The boys say, ‘I’d like to present my partner’ and then we say the girl’s name.”

Alonso Darias put a different spin on how he views the dancing instruction.

"It’s a fun night,” he said. “It’s a fun time to see your friends after school and be out on a Friday night.”

For a few others boys, however, it’s been a bit more of a challenge getting used to dancing with a girl.

Blake Danziger and Thomas Griffin both agreed that their experiences have been similar thus far: weird, different and a little bit awkward.

“It’s kind of hard because you don’t know the person you’re asking to dance,” they said. 

And yet another take on the experience of ballroom dancing comes from Ryan Freundlich who says the dancing is “good exercise,” but still feels awkward.

Lamoureaux also teaches his students how to sit properly, a demonstration that becomes a comical display of acceptable and non-acceptable posture. For the boys, slouching is not allowed, sticking legs straight out front and hunching down is a no-no, and wrapping legs around the sides of chairs like octopus holding on to an ocean snack is absolutely forbidden. Girls are required to sit up straight with hands folded on their laps and legs crossed at the ankles. The mode of dress requires boys to wear jackets and ties, and no sneakers. Girls are required to wear skirts or dresses, appropriate shoes and no sneakers, either.

All these social cues, explained Lamoureaux, help students in their everyday activities, and at social functions both inside and outside of school.

“I have parents who have told me when they attend social functions, they can always tell the difference between the kids who have taken my classes and the kids who haven’t,” he said. “I see the kids leave the middle school and high school and they come back and tell me that they used some of the things they learned from me that helped them in job interviews like making eye contact and having a firm handshake.

“Everything I am doing with the kids is to enhance their self-esteem, and when they go into different situations it will help them feel more comfortable and more at ease.”

Elana Rose, another sixth-grade participant, said taking the dancing lessons is a “great experience” and she admits she has learned how to sit properly. Her brother, Adam, is also taking lessons. Elana said her mother encouraged her to sign up, and her father, David Rose, signed up as a chaperone.

The chaperones act as host and hostesses and the students learn from Lamoureaux that they have a responsibility to greet the host and/or hostesses and to seek them out at the end of social events to say “thank you.”

“I set up receiving lines for each lesson where the students and their dance partners walk up and introduce themselves to the chaperones. That’s another experience the kids go through,” said Lamoureaux. “I tell my students to make eye contact with their dance partners and with the hosts and hostesses because it shows poise and confidence. I also teach a session on how to make small talk with a dance partner because the kids have a responsibility to carry on a conversation.”

At each lesson, boys and girls are given opportunities to choose a dance partner. Lamoureaux states this is important because it balances the anticipation of students doing the choosing and waiting to be chosen. If the number of boys or girls is not equal because of absences on any given night, Lamoureaux ensures that everyone gets a turn asking someone to dance.

During these moments of choosing or waiting to be chosen, a casual observer may see expressions that range from slight fear and mortification to extreme eye-rolling and nervous giggling behind hands. Commonplace to all, however, is awkwardness and embarrassment, but each week Lamoureaux gives his students building blocks of encouragement, and little by little he said the awkwardness and embarrassment fade, and self-confidence and self-esteem shine through his students a bit more brightly.

Lamoureaux also spends time researching and keeping up with the current musical tastes of sixth-graders, choosing songs with which his students are familiar. He admits, however, that part of his instruction can be a daunting task because kids’ musical tastes are changing constantly.

The dances he teaches include the foxtrot, the swing, line dancing and any “fad” dances that may come along. Through his dance school, he presents programs in different communities in much of the same fashion.

Over the years, however, Lamoureaux has accomplished far more than teaching kids to dance. He has cultivated and built mutual bonds of respect with his students, that same respect and consideration being the heart and soul of his instruction, he said, which he strives to instill into each year’s new group of sixth-grade ballroom dancing students.

“Consideration is truly my bottom line and that works when there is mutual respect for everyone,” he said. “It’s just out of mutual respect that I treat the kids with dignity and try never to embarrass them.

“I just give them an opportunity to prove themselves.”