PROFILES This is a page on which we feature each month an important person or group in the Maine dance scene.  Get to know your teachers and musicians!

FRED AND LIZ DUNN   Arguably the best-looking environmental engineer and legal secretary in the State o' Maine! (Well, it IS Maine, after all, and everyone wears at least two hats!)

     Ah, such a tale of romance!  Handsome bicycle racer and downhill skier comes back to New England, after doing some environmental engineering work in Australia, where he had taken some beginning ballroom lessons and liked them.  Starts lessons again in Portsmouth.  Falls in love with beautiful, young dance teacher.  He becomes her star student and dance partner; they get married.  They scrap their former careers and go professional, doing the thing they both love, dancing: as competitors, teachers, and teachers of other competitors.  Screen play, anyone?

     Although barely over 30, Liz has been teaching ballroom dance for 10 years.  When she was just 19, she answered an ad to work at a Fred Astaire Studio in Massachusetts (she had a strong background in jazz, tap and ballet).  She moved to Maine, first to join her sister in Waterville, then to Portland in 1993.  Fred, in his late 30's and with roots in Maine and New Hampshire, has always been very athletic.  He points out that competitive bicycle racing is great for one's aerobic fitness, but doesn't do much for one's ballroom dance posture, and he's had to work on that!   However, in his experience, men frequently have more success with ballroom dancing if they can relate it to sports, rather than relating it to ballet. 

     This talented young couple has started a new dance teaching business with studios in both Portland and Portsmouth (Seacoast DanceSport, see INSTRUCTOR page of this website).  They find this area amply supplied with  untapped dance talent.  Competitors themselves in the professional category, they train amateurs for national competitions.  In fact, Liz will be competing with one of her students at an "Open" level (which is above the "gold" level).  Although they have been "advised" to claim that they come from Massachusetts when they are competing (because judges might take them more seriously) they always state, loud and clear, that they come from MAINE.   Their goal is not to win, but rather to enjoy the "high" that comes from associating with other excellent dancers - "It's like swimming in the ocean instead of a pond" says Liz. They really enjoy teaching students from 8 to 80 years old.  They find that their teaching helps their dancing. 

     Fred and Liz take their profession seriously, but with a lighthearted and joyous attitude.  They were Finalists in the North American Championships in American Smooth Style Ballroom in 1998.  They have performed with the Portland Symphony Orchestra at a Dance Rhythms Concert, dancing Viennese waltz for 6 minutes on a narrow stage in front of 1200 people (a hot workout!).  They have also appeared in a TV ad for the Furniture Market.   Recently, one of their coaches, a top judge in New York, gave Fred the honorable assignment of technical review of the manual for American Style Ballroom and Latin Dance written for the Imperial Society of Teachers of Dancing.  

     The Dunns have observed that men learn faster when their partners learn to be good followers.  They also point out that rotation in classes helps everyone to learn faster.  They expect dancing and teaching to be a lifelong pursuit - they never stop learning themselves.  One thing that Fred has given up, however, is downhill skiing.  "I have realized that one injury could cost us a lot!", he says.