Dirty dancing at high school functions will get you kicked out
of events
Gilroy – Grinding, gyrating or dancing a bit too close in a sexually explicit matter, won’t be tolerated at Gilroy High School.
In the wake of the controversy over moves popularized by rap music and MTV, GHS has followed the lead of other California high schools and banned freak dancing at school-sponsored dances.
But the rule has nothing to do with remaining four inches apart at school dances, as reported by Gilroy High School student and Dispatch Columnist Chris Morsilli.
“All that is just rumors, that four-inch thing,” GHS Dean of Students Mani Corzo said. “We don’t have a four-inch rule for many reasons because first, the logistics of it would be completely ridiculous to have a ruler at a dance. Give me a break.”
“What we’re doing is we don’t want kids to do what we call indecent dancing,” he said.
There are no hard and fast rules since the situations can vary, but basically, students must dance face-to-face and not execute any inappropriate moves, Corzo said.
Verbal and written announcements specifying the new rule were passed out to students and included in the bulletin, before the high school’s winter dance. Still, some students decided to ignore the instructions and about five or six kids were booted out of the winter dance in January, Principal James Maxwell said.
Maxwell pointed out that schools are under no obligation whatsoever to schedule after school activities for students and that attending the dances and other activities staged by Gilroy High is a privilege.
“Since we’re sponsoring them, we set the rules and there will be no freak dancing because it’s so crude,” Maxwell said.
Maxwell said he’s sure parents agree that a ban was necessary.
Corzo said he approached Morsilli after his column appeared in this newspaper and asked where he’d heard of the measure stick rule but the GHS senior refused to divulge his sources to the school official. Morsilli said that was true.
A teacher had informed him that the new rule required a four-inch distance, but he reserved the right to keep his source confidential. The two had a talk about it last week.
“And he told me that that wasn’t in fact the rule,” the 18-year-old said. “We came to the consensus that the rule was, there is not to be any sexually explicit dancing.”
Morsilli said he was glad to hear that school officials wouldn’t be roaming dances, tape measures in hand. Still, his beef with the new rule is: what exactly constitutes
as “sexually explicit.”
Although Patrick Swayze and Jennifer Grey’s risque, sweat-inducing moves in “Dirty Dancing” hit the screen in 1987, the freak dancing issue didn’t become prominent front page news until Pleasanton’s Foothill High School banned it in January.
Other California high schools, including Santa Rosa’s Montgomery High School, followed suit by passing similar bans in the past two months. Sure there’s been a whole lot of commotion surrounding dirty dancing lately, but the trend is nothing new, Corzo said.
The longtime GHS employee – he’s retiring in June after 33 years with the high school – pointed out that the popular dances of his time, such as the tango and lambada, oozed sexuality.
“But this (freak dancing) is very simple to do, anybody could do it,” Corzo said. “My wife and I could do it too. Now the tango is a little tougher to do.”
All that teen angst never seriously manifested itself on the dance floor until December’s dance at Bonfante Gardens. Corzo said the dancing at that function was so nasty, the school had to take some action. Morsilli agrees.
He said the freshman and sophomore girls who were giving their boyfriends lap dances at that dance ruined it for everyone else. Morsilli said he thinks school officials will deal with it on a case-by-case basis.
“I think the way it’s going to be handled is only in extreme cases people will be asked to leave,” he said.
Although students were kicked out at the winter dance, all was calm at the junior prom on Saturday.
It appears that they’re finally getting the message.
“I have to admit, it was better at the prom,” Corzo said. “It wasn’t great, but it was better.”
Stephanie Walker, who attended the infamous Bonfante function, said the dancing definitely got out of hand. But chaperones cracked down at Saturday’s dance, without being pushy or overbearing, and it worked.
“I think it showed they were serious about it,” the 16-year-old junior said. “I think they handled it pretty well.”
There were still some inappropriate moves on the dance floor, but Walker thinks the actions will continue to be curbed since the administration has laid down the law.
