Yellowknife (Sep 29/03) - Slip into your dance shoes and waltz into a carefree world where the only thing that matters is the beat of the music and the sway of your partner.

Dance is escapism at its best, says Vicenta Bugg, a long-time teacher of Cha Cha, Tango and ballroom dance.

"I forget about the rain, the storm -- my debts," she laughs.

Modern and ballet dance instructor Karen Johnson agrees.

"It's a place to get away and spend time for yourself. Dancing isn't about what everyone else is doing, it's about your own journey. It's not about a competition," she said.

While teens enjoy the movements of jazz or hip-hop, many others like the grace or routine of ballet, Johnson said.

Both say the common denominator all dancers share is wanting to learn the movements and to become more confident.

"Give me a very shy person who would like to dance and I can make him or her sociable in a matter of one year," Bugg said.

From the time she was privately tutored in her Philippines home through to university where she continued her studies, dance has been an important part of Bugg's life.

One main reason Bugg started teaching dance in Yellowknife almost 30 years ago was to share her love of the activity.

"When I went to parties before, nobody would dance at nine o'clock or 10, but from 12 (midnight) until one o'clock, I said, 'What is this?'" She suspects some of that may be due to the amount of liquid courage consumed between nine and midnight.

In her dance classes, Bugg teaches people to become less inhibited and enjoy moving to a rhythmic sound. "It's a challenge - a test of your self-confidence and assurance," she says of learning dance steps.

And what do Yellowknifers enjoy swinging and swaying to?

"Ballroom dances will never fade," she says.

But it is the Cha Cha, by far, which has endured international dance floors over the decades.

"America in the 1950s became ga-ga with the Cha Cha. It will never disappear because of the tempo.

"You have to have a Latin attitude to express that dance."

The Mambo is another dance, similar to the Cha Cha, which was made popular by Patrick Swayze in the film Dirty Dancing and still enjoyed today.

Bugg says this dance originates in the Caribbean with the rhythms of Voo Doo dancing.

The Tango also has long roots of popularity, as does the Foxtrot.

Attending a dance at the Yellowknife Elks Club will see many couples performing the two-step dance, another favourite.

She says several variations of the two-step, both formal and informal, give the dance widespread appeal -- good for those who seldom dance.