Stu­dents, get ready to show your stuff! Medal Ball test­ing will be in the Plain­field stu­dio from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. on Feb­ru­ary 25, fol­lowed by din­ner and danc­ing in the Impe­r­ial Ball­room at the Amway Grand Plaza. Bob Long will be our judge for the day,  and will also be coach­ing at the Kent­wood stu­dio on the 24th.

We’ll be cel­e­brat­ing a cen­tury of dance by focus­ing on a dif­fer­ent dance each month. This month, we’re fea­tur­ing the Charleston at Kent­wood for the 8:15 pre-bronze group for the next two Thurs­days and on Wednes­days at 7:30 for the Plain­field stu­dio. Be sure to join us!

Arthur Mur­ray Grand Rapids is pleased to announce that guest dance coach Agnes Kazmier­czak will be vis­it­ing our stu­dios in late Jan­u­ary and Feb­ru­ary. The Inter­na­tional Smooth com­peti­tor and for­mer Danc­ing with the Stars con­tender is sched­uled for the Kent­wood Stu­dio, Jan. 30; Plain­field Stu­dio, Jan. 31 and Grandville Stu­dio, Feb. 1st.

About Agnes Kazmierczak

Miss Kazmier­czak is orig­i­nally from Poland and now resides in Cal­i­for­nia. She, along with her pre­vi­ous dance part­ner, Urs Giesen­hainer (from Ger­many) have been fea­tured per­form­ers on “Danc­ing with the Stars” and “Amer­i­can Ball­room Chal­lenge” sev­eral times. Miss Kazmier­czak recently joined the Arthur Mur­ray orga­ni­za­tion as a Pro­fes­sional Dance Con­sul­tant. She con­tin­ues to com­pete in Inter­na­tional Smooth danc­ing, and is a highly sought-after coach world­wide. We are please to have Miss Kazmier­czak join us. Please give her a warm wel­come to Grand Rapids!

Over the last 100 years, dance icon Arthur Mur­ray rev­o­lu­tion­ized ball­room and Latin dance lessons. Here’s some fun pop trivia cit­ing ref­er­ences to our found­ing father of smooth moves! (P.S. The pic­ture on the right is from an ad cel­e­brat­ing 50 years of Arthur Mur­ray — 50 years ago! We thought it was cool!)

• The Mur­ray name and fran­chise were fea­tured in the 1942 hit song “Arthur Mur­ray Taught Me Danc­ing in a Hurry”, writ­ten by Johnny Mer­cer and Vic­tor Schertzinger.
• In the film The Sky’s the Limit (1943), when Fred Astaire and his part­ner fin­ish a dance num­ber, she asks him “Where did you learn to dance like that?” and Astaire answers “Arthur Murray”.
• In the I Love Lucy episode “Lit­tle Ricky Gets a Dog”, (1957) Lucy tells Ricky that she is receiv­ing Mex­i­can hat danc­ing lessons from Arthur Murray.
• In the 1954 film, Phffft! star­ring Jack Lem­mon, Judy Hol­l­i­day and Kim Novack, Lemmon’s char­ac­ter (Robert Tracey) is seen walk­ing into an Arthur Mur­ray Dance Stu­dio in New York to work on his Rumba with teacher Merry Anders.
• In 1957, Buddy Holly & the Crick­ets per­formed a live show at the Arthur Mur­ray Dance Party – this is the only known live footage of Buddy Holly in his short lifetime.
• In the 1960 film The Apart­ment (Oscar win­ning film) starring Jack Lem­mon and Shirley Maclaine, Lemmon’s char­ac­ter (C.C.“Bud” Bax­ter) makes two ref­er­ences to Arthur Murray.
• In a dream sequence, “Arthur Mur­ray­rock” seeks help learn­ing Fred’s “Fran­tic” dance in the Flint­stones episode “Shinrock-a-Go-Go.” In the 1987 film Dirty Danc­ing, Johnny tells Baby that he received his train­ing at the Arthur Mur­ray studios.
• In the 1995 film The Amer­i­can Pres­i­dent, when Syd­ney Ellen Wade (Annette Ben­ing) remarks to the Pres­i­dent (Michael Dou­glas) while danc­ing, “I don’t know how you do it.”  Mis­un­der­stand­ing her ques­tion, the Pres­i­dent sim­ply replies, “It’s Arthur Mur­ray. Six lessons.”
• Arthur Mur­ray is men­tioned a The West Wing episode in a con­ver­sa­tion between a con­gress­man and Toby Ziegler. The Con­gress­man says, “Per­son­ally, I don’t know what to say to peo­ple who argue that the NEA is there to sup­port art that nobody wants to pay for in the first place… Arthur Mur­ray didn’t need the NEA to write Death of a Sales­man.” Toby cor­rects him by say­ing, “Arthur Mur­ray taught ball­room dance, Arthur Miller wrote Death of a Sales­man.”

This year, we’re cel­e­brat­ing 100 years since Arthur Mur­ray gave his first dance les­son. On April 4th, in stu­dios through­out the world, we’ll join together in the biggest “birth­day” dance ever to salute the mas­ter of the global groove! This bio, drawn from Wikipedia, will help give you a sense of the his­tory of the dance legacy that we’re delighted to share with you!

Arthur Mur­ray (April 4, 1895 – March 3, 1991) was a dance instruc­tor and busi­ness­man, whose name is most often asso­ci­ated with the dance stu­dio chain that bears his name.  His pupils included Eleanor Roo­sevelt, the Duke of Wind­sor, and John D. Rock­e­feller Jr.

Arthur Mur­ray was born in Gali­cia, Austria-Hungary in 1895 as Moses Teich­mann. In August 1897, he was brought to Amer­ica by his mother Sarah on the S.S. Fries­land, and landed at Ellis Island. The Teich­manns set­tled in Lud­low Street, in Man­hat­tan with his father, Abra­ham Teich­mann. He started his busi­ness of teach­ing the world to dance in 1912 at the age of 17; he taught at night while work­ing as a drafts­man by day.

Mur­ray was shy as a child and self-conscious about his tall, lanky appear­ance. He wanted very much to be a part of the social activ­i­ties that most of his friends enjoyed, par­tic­u­larly the dances, but was afraid to social­ize with girls.  At the age of 14, a friend of his whom he admired because of his pop­u­lar­ity with girls, taught him his first dance steps.  To get prac­tice on the dance floor, Mur­ray attended wed­dings in his neigh­bor­hood, where he found will­ing dance part­ners of every size and age.  Mur­ray won his first dance con­test at the Grand Cen­tral Palace, a pub­lic dance hall. The 1st prize had been a sil­ver cup, but Mur­ray went home with­out any­thing to show for his win. His part­ner of the evening took it. This loss made an impres­sion on Mur­ray, and in later years every win­ner in his dance con­tests took home a prize.

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