It looked like an old-fashioned high-school prom.
Entwined strings of big red and pink balloons arched above the entrance. Red paper hearts decorated windows. A DJ blasted dance music from the cafeteria stage while colored lights cut through the mist from a smoke machine. A photographer recorded images of the dressed-up couples so they could be enshrined in family scrapbooks.
Girls wore corsages on their wrists. Many of their escorts sported matching boutonnieres. “I think that’s just proper etiquette,” Carlos Webb, dapper in bow tie and checked coat, said of the flowers he’d bought for his smiling date. “That’s what you’re supposed to do. Plus, it’s about her.”
“Her,” in this case, was Webb’s 6-year-old daughter, Whitney. They were out on the town together one recent Saturday night for the Sandy Springs’ Recreation and Parks Department’s third annual Daddy-Daughter Dance. Carlos and Whitney were among 125 couples who signed up for the dance, held this year at Ison Springs Elementary School in Sandy Springs.
Webb knew his job for this night: Do nothing embarrassing. Forget all those dance moves he’d learned in high school. “I’m going to follow her lead,” he said, sounding very dad-like.
Joe Bartlett and his daughter Joanna weren’t worried about how their dancing looked. They were having too good a time rocking as Joe swung his 6-year-old partner across the floor, swinging her between his legs or over his head. “I like the move where you swing me between your legs,” Joanna said. “It’s really fun.”
They’d attended the dance last year, when it was held at Joanna’s school, Woodland Elementary, and had so much fun they had to come back. They’d been practicing for the dance, Joe said. Every night, they’d move the furniture in the living room and work on their moves. “She wears me out,” he said.
Across the dance floor, Jason Rosenberg had no idea where his daughters learned the dance moves they were showing. Addison, 6, and Madeleine, 8, had been looking forward to this dance all year, he said, and now they were making the most of it. Addison, for one, looked like a non-stop dancing machine as she waved her arms to the beat and moved about the floor. “She takes dance classes, but I’ve never seen that before,” her dad said.
The things we do for our children sometimes amaze even us. Brian Oravetz said he and his daughter Riley, who’s 7, picked up some of their showy steps from TV dance competitions. “I may be her father, but she’s also my best little buddy. I love doing this with her,” Brian said. “She loves ‘Dancing With The Stars,’ so I’ll pick up my head and make a fool of myself.”
Besides, Marie Oravetz, Brian’s wife and Riley’s mom, was watching from the concession stand, where she was handing out cookies and soft drinks to partygoers and enjoying the dance-floor show her family was putting on. “If they’re happy, I’m happy,” she said. “Plus, I get to the see them all dressed up.”
Jeffrey Adams was happy to be there, too. This was the third Daddy-Daughter dance he and 9-year-old daughter Isabelle had attended together. Last summer, the divorced dad took a job in Michigan. Being a new employee, he had little time off, but he wanted to make it to the dance in Sandy Springs. So, he said, he drove hundreds miles in a single day to get to the dance and would drive back the next day.
“We come here to be together one night of the year, to be together,” he said. “It’s very special. It’s kind of like Christmas…. I had to do what I could to get here.”
