Shanghai’s senior waltz returns to the past in midday ballrooms

A group of pensioners cheered under the disco lights as 60-year-old Xu Li jumped into her partner’s arms, her legs spread in perfect parting.

It was just a normal Wednesday at one of Shanghai’s many midday dance clubs, a phenomenon born out of the city’s deep-rooted love of dancehall culture from its Jazz Age heyday.

Each day, many venues host multi-hour day sessions across the financial hub, some starting as early as 6am.

Bars like the historic Paramount Ballroom are time capsules from the 1930s, while others twinkle with neon pink and green rave lights in the early afternoon.

All are important spaces for their mostly elderly clientele to socialize and reclaim the past through the foxtrot, rumba and polka.

“I was quite lonely at home,” 66-year-old Lin Guang told AFP at a dance hall called Old Dreams Of Shanghai in December, explaining that he felt lost after his retirement.

“Coming here to dance makes me feel young again. Now, I seem to have endless energy.”

Wine red velvet curtains and cabaret lights framed the sprung wooden floor as a live band played Shanghai jazz classics. Women, some dressed in vintage dresses or elegant traditional qipao dresses, took off elegant dancing shoes, while men’s shoes were meticulously polished and their hair combed.

“We want to recreate a bit of the old Shanghai culture,” said 69-year-old band leader Jin Zhiping.

For him and his similarly elderly colleagues, the lunchtime sessions, priced at 60 yuan ($8.50), are a source of purpose.

“It lifts our spirits and makes us feel like we still have value,” Jin said.

For Xu, the athletic sexagenarian, the benefits of exercise are “huge”.

“I feel beautiful and I’m getting more beautiful as time goes by,” she said.

Like my home

In 1930s Shanghai, ballroom dancing symbolized modernity and sophistication.

“Shanghai is a port city,” said Chen Yiming, the entrepreneur behind Old Dreams Of Shanghai. “We absorbed foreign cultures and mixed them with our own.”

The art deco Paramount Ballroom was a must-see destination, with guests including warlords, poets and actor Charlie Chaplin.

These days, it still swings open its heavy brass doors daily, an elevator that transports a steady stream of visitors nearly a century back in time for 180 yuan each.

Wei Xiaomeng, 90, comes to the Paramount Ballroom five times a week.

“This ballroom is like my home,” he told AFP.

First she sneaked into a dance hall as a curious high school student.

“I thought it was luxurious and I loved it,” she said.

As a waltz began, couples swept the floor, arms tight and feet moving in perfect sync under the gilded cornices and glittering chandeliers.

“That feeling of loneliness? It’s completely gone here,” smiled 75-year-old Yuan Yingjie. “It’s a familiar, familiar feeling.”

Fafa, a 70-year-old who visits the site three times a week, put it simply: “Here, everything is joy.”

Just old, not dead

Old Dreams Of Shanghai’s Chen said that for older customers, ballrooms are gyms, entertainment venues and social clubs all rolled into one.

“An elderly person is just an elderly person, they are not dead. They have the same social and recreational needs as everyone else,” he said.

However, there are concerns that the average age of the dancers could see this quintessential Shanghai phenomenon slowly disappear.

It is not clear how many of these ballrooms still exist. AFP found about a dozen online, while a recent local media report suggested about 20 were still operating.

“Promoting dance culture to a younger generation is really, really necessary,” said Paramount executive director Stella Zheng, 33.

Personal contact was especially important in China’s hyper-digital society, he said.

“The eye contact, the body language… you can listen to music, make friends through dance.”

Paramount organizes youth parties in collaboration with other dance institutions and plans to offer classes in styles such as modern and Latin.

Chen said she had noticed a growing retro trend.

“More and more young people are starting to join to modern or swing dance,” he said.

Older dancers are excited to share the floor.

“We really hope young people will come,” said Wang Li, 65.

“Young people have an energy, a bright vitality. Being with them makes us feel younger too.”