Tufts University Ballroom Dance Team Records

Collection

Call Number: UA237

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Scope and Contents

The collection contains web crawls, web screenshots, administrative files, photographs, video, fliers, and photographs concerning the Tufts University Ballroom Dance Team.

Dates

Creation: 2002 -- 2020

Creator

Tufts University Ballroom Dance Team (Organization)

Language of Materials

English

Access

This collection is open for research. This collection may require review before it is available for use. Please contact DCA for further details.

Conditions Governing Use

Some material in this collection may be protected by copyright and other rights. Please see “Reproductions and Use” on the Digital Collections and Archives website for more information about reproductions and permission to publish. Copyright to all materials created by Tufts University employees in the course of their work is held by the Trustees of Tufts University.

Biographical / Historical

Tufts Ballroom Dance Team was founded in 1995. Formerly known as the Ballroom Dance Club, the group was first started in 1991 by Annemarie Millin of Boston University.

The Ballroom Dance Club was started in 1991 by Annemarie Millin of Boston University. At first, Millin just came to Tufts to give lessons to a few students. The lessons then began to attract enough interest for an official club to be formed. In 1992, the Senate allotted enough funds to allow the club to meet the costs of those members wishing to participate in regional competitions.

During the school year of 1995-1996, the club became an official dance team on campus, started by juniors Emily Jutkiewicz and Terresa Pietro as a subdivision of the of the non-competitive Ballroom Dance Club. The club is a place for socialization and learning, while the traveling team is for competitions. The newly established Tufts Ballroom Dance had its first competition in November, 1995 at Brown College, and a successful second competition sponsored by Harvard where almost all couples advanced onto the quarter final round.

At its founding in 1991, the Ballroom Dance club taught two main styles of dances: “Latin” dances like the cha-cha, the rhumba, and the samba; and “Smooth” dances such as the waltz, the tango, and the foxtrot. As of today, the team teaches four main styles of competitive partner dance: American smooth, international standard, American rhythm, and international Latin. Each year the team competes at six collegiate competitions in the New England region, the main one being the annual Tufts Ballroom Dance Competition, usually held in November or December. The team began hosting the Tufts Ballroom Dance Competition, which features a unique collegiate championship in 2002.

In 2014, the team celebrated its 20th anniversary with an Alumni Event which featured performances from team members past and present. Tufts Ballroom Dance Team received in Dean Bruce Reitman Jumbo Award for making an outstanding and meaningful contribution to the Tufts community at the Student Organization Award Ceremony on April 21, 2016.

The current coach who teaches dance lessons at all levels for the Tufts Ballroom Dance Team is Mark Nocera, who has been a competitor, teacher, and adjudicator of ballroom dance for over 30 years. Mark was a former World Professional 10 Dance Championship Semi Finalist.