By Luke Voogt
Nearly 90 years since Jean Rickey first started dancing, she still visits her beloved Leopold Community Hall for ballroom meets.
Her parents began taking her to the dances in a bassinet in the early 1920s and would place her behind the piano for the evening.
She began dancing herself at age seven.
“We learnt to dance quite young,” the Moolap retiree said.
“It’s different to you younger ones today.”
She and her two siblings would sit and watch her parents dance, before the family returned to their home in Wallington.
“We were allowed to go onto the floor until the time they had the waltz competition,” she said.
“We used to have 800 people in that hall on New Year’s Eve. The committee there at the moment desn’t understand how we did it.”
Jean, who just turned 95, joined several nonagenarians at the scene of their childhood dances during a seniors’ ballroom event at the hall on Sunday.
She stopped dancing 15 years ago, due to her late husband’s health, but still loved to be involved.
“I just go and listen to the lovely music now,” she said.
“I want to dance, but my body just won’t let me do it. But I think I’m lucky just to do what I can do.”
About 70 people attended the dance, with Queenscliff’s Jack Beazley, 88, and Leopold’s Scotty Frazer, 92, the eldest to take to the floor.
Several attendees used to go to the hall to dance when they were young, according to organiser Kevin Smith.
“After all these years, Old Time Ballroom Dancing is still being held on a weekly basis at the hall,” he said.
