Just Keep On Dancing!

January 4, 2023 Simone Ellin, Associate Editor

Ruth Rubenstein Grill was 68 when she first studied ballroom dance. (Provided photo)

As a young mother living in Queens, New York, my mom, Ruth Rubenstein Grill, looked forward to the one day a week when she rode the subway into Manhattan to take modern dance classes.

Now that I’m a mom — albeit of grown children — I can easily imagine how that class, and even the trip there and back, must have offered a much-needed reprieve from taking care of others. Besides, Mom was always passionate about dance.

Sometime after my younger sister was born, Mom gave up her dance classes. The only dancing she did after that was in the living room with my sister and me when we’d boogie down to the Supremes and the Bee Gees’ “Saturday Night Fever.”

It wasn’t until she was 68 that Mom returned to dancing. This time, instead of modern dance, Mom studied ballroom.

Almost immediately, she became obsessed, not just with the joy of movement but with the whole ballroom subculture — the music, the costumes, the shoes and the glitzy jewelry.

She had a new circle of friends, many of them decades younger. Soon, Mom was taking daily lessons. Though she felt guilty about the financial expense of her hobby, dance had become the center of her life and giving it up wasn’t an option. Clearly, it was money well spent.

Nothing could keep my mother from the studio. One time while in her early 80s, she was stuck in traffic and late for her lesson. Mom left the car in a nearby parking lot and walked the mile or two to the studio. She wasn’t about to let a traffic jam interfere with her lesson!

When she wasn’t dancing at the studio near her home, Mom was schlepping into Manhattan for tango lessons or to attend evening dance socials at the tango studio. On dance social nights, she was rarely home before midnight.

Before long, mom was performing in biannual dance showcases. At first, she performed one, maybe two dances. But after several years of study, Mom danced five, six or seven dances in one evening.

As the years went by, Mom became one of the oldest dancers in her showcases. With her teacher, Dmitri, twirling her around and lifting her high into the air, she was an inspiration for younger dancers.

At an age when most people are slowing down, Mom was just revving up. Her skills were improving, she was in great physical shape, and her mind remained sharp from the mental effort of memorizing her dance steps.

When the pandemic began, Mom was about 83. We worried that she would get COVID-19, and urged her to stay home and away from other people. Mom was mostly compliant, but she wasn’t willing to give up her dance classes. Showcases were cancelled and so were group dance socials, but Dmitri was still instructing individual students. We tried to dissuade Mom from taking her lessons, but she demurred.

“I will lose my mind if I can’t dance,” she said.

She assured us that her teacher was obsessively clean and extremely careful.

“We wear masks and we don’t touch. No one else is in the studio but Dmitri and I,” she said.

So we stopped arguing.

Later that year, Mom self-published her first book, a memoir called “Davka, I Will Dance.” The book, published under the pen name of Naomi Silver, includes vignettes about Mom’s adventures in the magical world of ballroom dancing and is interspersed with reflections about her early life as a hidden child of the Holocaust; her coming-of-age experiences as an immigrant in New York City, her marriage, child-rearing years, divorce, love affairs and more.

Now 85, Mom still takes daily dance classes and, according to Dmitri, continues to improve. We celebrated Mom’s 85th birthday last July with a party at the studio. Dressed in a royal blue dress with a lavender sash and sparkly jewelry, Mom danced the night away as her guests — friends from all segments and phases of her life — oohed and aahed.

She said it was the best night of her life!