Dance teacher traveled weekly to Yesterdays in Detroit to learn ballroom
By Vickki Dozier
Lansing State Journal
LANSING, Mich. (AP) — Five, six, seven, eight. Right cha cha step left, pivot. Left cha cha step right, pivot. Got it?
Sterling Armstrong calls out his “chants.” Eight couples glide around the dance floor.
The banter is friendly, like they’re family. Armstrong’s laugh is infectious and genuine. His moves are apparently effortless.
It’s Tuesday night at Gregory’s on the north side of Lansing, and Armstrong is teaching his ballroom dance class.
If he wasn’t calling out the steps, you’d never know he’s the teacher. He’s dancing along with his students, making sure they change partners each song, the Lansing State Journal reported.
Armstrong is 68 years old, soon to be 69, and he’s having a ball.
“Sterling is a wonderful teacher because he’s all about having fun,” Phebeit Ingram said. His motto is “if you mess up, so what, catch up.”
Ingram first saw Armstrong at an open house teaching hustles. He invited her to come to his hustle classes, and she did. Then she started coming to the ballroom classes.
“There are fundamentals to it, but if you know the basics, just have fun with it.” Ingram said. “This is going on my second year. Now I’m all in. I love it. I don’t ever want to give
it up.”
Armstrong retired from the Lansing School District in 2006 after more than 30 years.
He’d started his career at the Boys Vocational School while attending Michigan State University. From there, he worked as an outreach worker for the Youth Development Corp.
He joined the Lansing School District in 1975 as a public safety officer at Otto Junior High School and ended his career as an attendance specialist in the Department of Student Services.
It was only 16 years ago that he began to learn ballroom dancing and hustles.
A friend of his, Bill Andrews, would have parties at his house where they would dance, Armstrong said. That’s where it started, how he became a teacher.
“I developed a little chant, instructions on how to do it as we were doing it, 16 or so years ago,” he said. “I would get up and say, ‘Up two, back two, up back side two, right behind you, one two three, left behind the right with a one two three, right left right left right left, right left, then start again.’”
Andrews suggested folks would pay Armstrong to teach them hustles and encouraged him to do so.
Eventually, a few of his friends got jobs as DJs at Gregory’s. They asked him to come teach. He’s been doing it ever since.
Initially, he only knew about three hustles and needed to learn more.
“Bryan Beverly was a good dancer and he would come down and help me out,” Armstrong said. “He learned a new hustle somewhere and taught it to me, so I added it to my repertoire. My daughter learned one and taught me and another young person came in and made up a hustle. Then I had three or four new ones.”
He heard a club called Yesterdays in Detroit was teaching hustles and went to check it out. As it turned out, they were teaching ballroom dancing, too.
Armstrong was amazed at how many people were there and the age range, which was about 40 to 70 years old.
“Everybody was having a good time dancing, and doing this ballroom, and I liked what I saw,” Armstrong said.
He went back the following week, taking a couple carloads of people with him, including Sam Horton of Lansing. Horton would go to Detroit every Tuesday and Wednesday to learn ballroom. He came back here and started teaching.
“Sam started teaching and that’s where I really learned ballroom dancing, taking it from his class,” Armstrong said.
When Armstrong switches gears to teach a new hustle, his students break up into two lines. You don’t need a partner for this.
Hustles became popular because ladies like to dance, he says. Many times there aren’t enough men asking.
He takes his remote and switches to the song “Baby Workout” by George Benson and the Count Basie Orchestra.
Some of the dancers add their own little twists, turns and spins. Sometimes someone bumps into their dance floor neighbor. They laugh and keep going.
When Armstrong isn’t counting out, he’s laughing along with everyone else.
He’s always loved to dance, but in middle school and high school he was busy playing sports, and he says, he was too bashful to dance.
But the twist got him going in 1960. “I would watch Chubby Checker and imitate his moves,” Armstrong said.
During his college years at Michigan State University, Armstrong would attend parties and do the dances popular back then, such as The Boogaloo, the Twist and the Monkey.
That is, when he wasn’t studying or playing football. Armstrong played defensive back on MSU’s national championship teams of 1965 and 1966. He was in the 1966 Rose Bowl game and the “Game of the Century” against Notre Dame the following November.
“Sterling is very patient, compassionate about dance and he enjoys instruction,” said Ida Ridgeway of Delta Township. She has been taking lessons from Armstrong for nine years and now helps teach at the Tuesday and Thursday classes. “I really believe in what he’s doing.”
Ridgeway says ballroom has a four count beat, but that it can have a five count also, depending on the difficulty of the moves. “Sterling breaks it down like a-b-c,” she said. “He breaks every move down so that who he is instructing can understand how they can interact together.”
He’s known these days as “Capitol City Hustler,” teaching hustle and ballroom all over the state.
Shaltreece Herron started taking ballroom lessons from Armstrong a little over two years ago. It was the first activity she engaged in after her divorce.
“What a lot of people don’t realize is that it’s an excellent way to reintegrate yourself into a social setting,” Herron said. “It’s safe, it’s drug free, it’s fun to do, you get to learn something new and it saves a lot of women in terms of not being lonely or making new friends.”
Her first time coming, she was invited by co-workers and was sitting, watching. Armstrong approached her and asked “Are you sure you wouldn’t like to dance tonight?’” She went for it and hasn’t sat down since.
“Dancing is different because it’s a community, so everybody dances with everybody,” Herron said. “All the people know each other and everybody dances with everybody because it’s the only way that you get better. I came all the way out of my shell.”
Derrick Harris has been taking his lessons for five years. He says Armstrong works with students and takes the time to help them learn. And he’ll do it for anybody.
“Sterling hates to admit it, but no matter where he is, if somebody wants to learn, he’ll teach,” Harris said. “If you’re standing on the side watching, he’ll just come get you and work with you for a little bit. And that’s at no charge. That’s just love of dancing.”
