History
Dancebreak began in Fall 2005, as “Faster Polka” because we loved faster-tempo music than was normally played at Jammix and Friday Night Waltz, especially polkas. (Also, we assumed it would force us to come up with a better name.) In those days, each quarter Richard Powers taught non-Stanford social dance series courses that were open to both students and the outside community on Thursday nights, 7-10pm. In addition, Roble Gym closed at 10:50pm. This left the big studio unused for the final 50 minutes (since no group wanted the space at that late hour for such short a block of time). When we realized that, we asked for (and received) permission from Richard to stay after his class and use the big studio. This provided us a nice, if short, weekly dance where we decided what music to play and dances to dance. 5 weeks into the quarter, Richard’s courses would conclude, and because no other group was already reserving the big studio for Thursday nights, we could make our start time earlier, thus enjoying an even-longer weekly dance of our own!
In Spring 2009, concerned we were giving people the wrong impression about our focus (and possibly unintentionally intimidating them), we finally renamed ourselves — to “Dancebreak.”
Richard’s non-Stanford classes moved off-campus in Winter 2010, and other groups wanted Thursday nights too, so we chose to try different nights. We have mostly alternated between Monday and Wednesday nights, with Mondays being preferred due to potential conflict with other dance events on other weeknights.
We became an official Voluntary Student Organization in Fall 2013, thanks to the efforts of Tatiana Kuzovleva (BS 2015), who became our first president. Roble Gym was scheduled to be closed for a long-overdue renovation starting Summer 2013 (the renovation actually began 1 year late). Although this didn’t immediately affect us (Dancebreak holds regular sessions only during the academic year), it forced us to look for alternative space on campus, many of which were unavailable except to student groups (or charged fees). That motivated us to become an actual student group.
In the final weeks of Winter 2020, we went on indefinite hiatus due to the COVID-19 pandemic. After Santa Clara County (which includes Stanford) issued its “shelter in place” orders, the University immediate decided to follow them, effectively emptying the campus (all undergraduate students were required to leave campus housing).
Luckily, Dancebreak survived the pandemic. Once the risks of infection had dropped to acceptable levels as determined by university and county guidelines, and the best judgement of the officers, we resumed our weekly meetings.
Dancebreak’s focus has changed over the years. Originally, most attendees were dancers in Richard’s 9pm class, which was usually intermediate-level. Thus we tended to play music for intermediate level dancing (such as faster polkas, a particular favorite of the early crowd). After Richard started holding his non-Stanford classes off-campus, and especially after the early attendees graduated, we shifted our focus to being a practica for Richard’s Stanford dance classes, in order to help and encourage new dancers to discover a love and passion for social dancing like the original dancers had. After the pandemic, we have focused on being a hub for the many different kinds of social dance popular at Stanford, and a shared community for undergraduate and graduate students alike.