For older Asian American immigrants, ballroom dancing was supposed to be a safe haven

When a gunman fatally shot 11 people and wounded nine others in Monterey Park over the weekend, it was more than just the latest tragedy in America’s horrific mass-shooting epidemic. “I know a lot of people think, ‘Ballroom dancing, it’s so odd, why do Asian people like it?’ But it’s been a big, thriving community for a long time.” The once strictly European practice of ballroom dancing has long since internationalized and taken on a life of its own, with dancers of all ages and nationalities finding joy, community and a healthy workout in swaying through the waltz, the fox trot, swing and rumba. But ballroom dancing has especially been a draw for older immigrants in Southern California, not only as an art form popular in their countries of origin but also one that’s embraced, recognized and accessible in the U.S. “Lots of immigrant communities — Chinese, Vietnamese, Filipino — have ballroom dance studios,” said Carolina San Juan, director of graduate mentoring for the Academic Advancement Program at UCLA, who did her master’s thesis on Filipino American ballroom dancers. Lots of immigrant communities, not just Asians.” A 2007 scholarly article from the Journal of Asian American Studies noted that although dance studios are “ubiquitous” across Southern California, only a few existed expressly for international-style ballroom dancing, with the largest located in Asian American enclaves such as Monterey Park — a city several miles east of downtown Los Angeles. One triangular sector of the Asian-populated San Gabriel Valley has more of these large international dance studios than does all of Orange County.” In an email to The Times, Uba, a professor emeritus and former department head of English at Cal State Northridge, said older Asian immigrants go ballroom dancing primarily for the exercise, to socialize and for “the aesthetic properties of the dance.” “Dance studios like Star and Lai Lai with their afternoon tea dances and evening dance ‘parties’ are not only filled with AAPI dancers but are primarily devoted to the social dancers, not the competition-level international-style dancers,” Uba said.