part 26
Many of my friends talked about wanting to plan a trip together so through friends we rented a bus from the church. Side of bus said (Christians In Action) and we filled the bus with 40 dancers/friends. We drove from Miami Beach to Nashville visiting Grand Old Opry. We saw the last performance of Grandpa Jones and were invited to line dance in the isles of the theatre never done before. We were on live TV performing my choreography at Wild Horse Saloon, dance was called East Coastin. I met many nationally known C/W artist and another live TV show. River boat cruises and tour Opry land hotel was amazing trip we never forgot was my first and only road trip.
Filled every day with dance and tours and performances. Now I decided we should go on a cruise and try to arrange line dance group, and figure out how to arrange for our dancers to have lessons in ship. Just so happened one of my friends who danced was also a travel agent and so we put together a Dance Cruise. The ship was huge(LOL) Dolphin cruise line “The Seabreeze ” there was one small open deck at back of ship that the entire guests and crew came out on to at night to dance.
Everyone knew everyone was like s big happy family. Ruth and I had lessons in the day, then I set up music system on deck and played music. We had couples dances, 2 step swing, cha and line dance in evenings. I think total ship was 800 people. 40 cruises later was on the biggest ship in the world then on the Oasis and the Allure. I think is 3.500 passengers. We did every cruise from smallest to biggest and everything in between. I was first line dance teacher to do sail away party for the entire ship and teach my group of 100 to 150 dancers from around the world in private group lessons and contract with cruise line to teaching the entire ship dance classes for the week.
I was asked each time I booked a cruise for my group to contract to do the classes and sail away party etc. for that week on board that cruise . Was great compensation and huge exposure for line dancing on many of the cruises in those days we had a blast . So sailed with Norwegian. Dolphin, Carnival, Royal Caribbean, mostly and some ships we went on multiple times, but all good things must come to an end and finding spaces and getting time slots for our dancing on cruises became more difficult. Rooms and dance floors got smaller, people wanting to line dance got bigger, open decks became cluttered with movie screens wave rides and sports. What can I tell you, cruising is wonderful and we had a hell of a ride but not the same anymore.
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