The clock was approaching 11 a.m. Tuesday, and the sound of Frank Sinatra lingered throughout Yolo Hall. An intermediate ballroom class was about to begin.
A blond woman walked into Yolo Hall Room 213 wearing periwinkle cotton capri pants, a matching button-down top and white jazz shoes. She told the people in the room to line up for roll call and to get their first partners.
"I see we have more gentlemen than ladies today," the woman said. "Well, Ryan has said he is willing to follow for any man that is willing to lead him," she continued, as she pointed to the teaching assistant standing in the front of the room.
Those in the room laughed, but a hand went up. "I'll dance with him," a longhaired man said.
No one in the room seemed phased or disturbed by the gesture, and the woman nodded approvingly and continued.
Patricia Smiley, 58, has been a ballroom instructor at Chico State for 33 years.
During those years, she expanded and maintained one of the university's most popular classes and a hobby that many students find as a good alternative to the normal downtown Chico activities, said Sara Nielsen, an intermediate ballroom student, in a phone interview.
Smiley grew up in Sacramento. She always wanted to dance but could never afford the expensive hobby.
"Dresses can cost anywhere from $2,000 to $6,000 for competitions," she told her class, before showing them a video from the American Challenge Ballroom Competition.
"I went to the 1998 competition," Smiley said. "Let me tell you, it was nothing but sparkle and glitter for three days."
In college, Smiley began taking ballet, jazz, modern and tap-dancing lessons. Along the way she stumbled across her passion: ballroom dancing.
Smiley received her Master of Arts in Physical Education/Dance from Chico State in 1974, she said. She went on to receive her Doctorate of Education in Educational Administration/Distance Learning from Nova Southeastern University in Florida in 1995.
When she started working at Chico State, Willie Simmons, a boxer and football coach with a passion for ballroom dancing, was the only other ballroom instructor. She knew there was something great about the Chico ballroom scene when she saw Simmons escorting the ladies to and from the dance floor, something that is considered a social norm among the dancers in town.
There is no other class on campus that teaches etiquette like ballroom dance does, Smiley said.
"It has given people an opportunity to get in touch with more old fashioned manners," Nielsen said.
Aside from Chico State, Smiley has also taught dance at Butte College, Diablo Valley College in Pleasant Hill, and in Ireland, where she took part in a teacher exchange for a year in 1988, she said.
Next semester there will be five beginning, two intermediate and two online dance classes students can take from five different instructors. Smiley will teach both a beginning and an intermediate ballroom course.
There are also nightly workshops taught by ballroom dance teaching assistants and weekly dances put on by the ballroom dance club, for which Smiley is also the adviser.
Smiley doesn't think the program can get much bigger than it already is. To make the program grow she thinks it would have to offer not only recreational ballroom, but advanced activities, competition and a ballroom dance team. All of these additions would require funding, faculty and facilities, she said.
"I feel like the CEO of a company," Smiley said. "I don't have to be everywhere all the time to know what is going on anymore. There is so much interest, it has all just taken off."
Liz Hanna can be reached at ehanna2@mail.csuchico.edu
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