BALLROOM DANCE

Dancing with Aubrey at Rebecca's wedding.jpg

DAMIAN MARTORANA
Professional Ballroom Dance Instructor

Damian Martorana’s dance career started the way a lot of good stories start: he finished a hamburger and walked in off the street.

He had just returned from playing professional volleyball in Europe. Parked in a Wendy’s lot in Rochester, eating across the street from an Arthur Murray studio, he thought about Hollywood, about making movies, and about Fred Astaire, John Travolta, and Patrick Swayze—actors who were famous, in part, because they knew how to dance. He finished the burger, drove across the street, walked in, and asked if they were hiring.

He had no formal training. What he received on the first day was simple and complete: the patterns, how to lead them, and how to teach them. It was the same practical chain Johnny Castle describes in Dirty Dancing. Six months later, he was on the opening staff of a new Arthur Murray studio in Orlando.

In Orlando, he built a student base for social dancing, weddings, and competition. He then left the franchise to create Rhythm Fitness: Latin dance taught as a cardio class so students left the gym with steps they could use on a real floor. The idea was “from the gym floor to the dance floor.” Classes spread through local YMCAs and Bally Total Fitness locations, appeared on local television, and led to private lessons, group work, and showcases.

That work grew into Rhythm and Fever, a theatrical ballroom show he produced, choreographed, and performed with his partner and students. Inspired by movie dance sequences, it began at the Y Not Lounge with a handful of people and grew into packed houses and a sold-out double dinner show. He also taught on dance cruises, brought the program to the Caribbean, performed for charity, and produced salsa instructional videos.

For more than twenty years, the through-line has been the same thing he was handed on day one: patterns, how to lead them, and how to teach them. He works especially well with people who are nervous, who think they have two left feet, or who only want the basics for a wedding, a cruise, or a night out. The benefits—health, confidence, a social life—arrive whether someone ever competes or not. That is what makes the work worth teaching.