Dodge seniors still dancing after 10 years

Before Jewel Thoman was old enough to dance, she stood on her father's shoes, gripping his big hands as he swept her around the Moose Lodge dance floor on Saturday nights.
    Thoman's whole family loved dancing, so adults and children alike looked forward to those evenings, when local musicians played country music late into the night and farmers danced the fox trot, the polka and the two-step or waltzed their wives and daughters around the lodge. 
    Thoman still loves to dance, and she sees no reason to stop now, just because she's an official senior citizen. In fact, now that she has more time to call her own, Thoman likes to dance more than ever.
    And she's got a lot of company.
    For almost a decade now, line dancers have been meeting weekly at the Dodge City Senior Center, and by now there are a lot of them. They're a lively, fast-moving group, and they're not there to knit or bake cookies. These people know how to dance.
    And they're recruiting. The DCSC line dancers have a message for everyone who's at least 55 years old: "We want you."
    "No one has to have any experience at all," said Thoman as she took a quick break from class on Tuesday.
    Behind her, rows of dancers turned, stepped, clicked and tapped in unison, spread out across the Senior Center's polished wooden floor. 
    "We'll teach them," she said. "I'd never line danced before, so I just got behind someone else who knew what they were doing."
    Thoman excused herself and stepped back in line without missing a beat.

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Reach Claire O'Brien at (620) 408-9931 or e-mail her at claire.obrien@dodgeglobe.com.