Ballroom dance studio keeps people on their toes

Marilyn Whitlow’s shrink told her to get out of the house and do something fun.

At first Whitlow wasn’t sure what to do because for years she had cared for her brain damaged husband and rarely left the house.

Whitlow thought she was going nuts but her shrink just figured Whitlow needed some air. The doctor told Whitlow to try taking dance lessons at the Blue Moon Ballroom Dance Studio in Bonita Springs.

“I found out I wasn’t insane and the doctor knew (of the studio) so I came and my neighbors noticed a difference instantly,” said Whitlow, 69, of North Naples.

After learning the cha cha, rumba, swing, fox trot and waltz, it was like Whitlow came out of her shell once again.

“I love music and I love dancing. Dancing lifted me up,” Whitlow said.
Barbara Tucker is the owner of the studio and is happy to hear success stories like Whitlow’s.

She opened the studio more than four years ago and teaches all kinds of ballroom dancing in the studio, which is lined with mirrors and a large dance floor.

“I like the personalized attention, it’s not commercialized,” said Mike Salzano, 42, of Fort Myers Beach.

Commercialized is not what Tucker wants people to feel when they take lessons.

“I try to make them comfortable, it’s hard to come in here for the first time. It takes courage,” Tucker said.

The studio draws people from all over the area because it’s the only one between Naples and Fort Myers, said Tucker, who got her dancing start in New York in the 70’s.

“I like teaching and we get to change people’s lives and in their faces they change in the course of lessons,” said Tucker, who started teaching dance in Southwest Florida in the country clubs. “We really get a chance to touch them.”

But being able to reach her students takes patience and talented instructors like Adam Forrester, 24, of Naples.

Forrester has worked for Tucker since the studio opened but his background wasn’t in dancing. Tucker met Forrester when he was a barista at a Starbucks in Naples.

“I walked in and we had some banter back and forth and I told him I was going to make him a dance teacher,” Tucker said.

She told him to come from behind the counter and taught him a step.

She then gave him her card and offered him free lessons and a chance to become an instructor for her.
He never called.

“I went back and he remembered me. He came from behind the counter and showed me the step I taught him. From that moment on, he was my student,” said Tucker, who turned Forrester into an instructor.

The duo now work together and help students build their dancing confidence, even if they are convinced they have two left feet.

“I wake up in the morning to dance, I just happen to get paid to do it,” said Forrester, who is helping coordinate dances for the studios student showcase on June 4. “I love working for Barbara, she is a typical New Yorker ... fun, wild, crazy, and very enthusiastic.”