Continental Dance Club Gets People on Their Feet

Think you can’t dance? Felicia Banks thinks you’re wrong.

Banks, the fair-haired director of Bloomfield’s Continental Dance Club, has taught so many seemingly hopeless cases that she’s earned the automotive-inspired nickname BMW, or blonde miracle worker.

Students come in clumsy, tripping over their toes in the first day of classes. But after some instruction, muscle memory and newly learned skills kick in and something approaching elegance is achieved.

To ease people through the sometime awkward stages of learning to move their bodies, Banks said she and her crew use humor, lightheartedness and a sense of fun.

Seven days a week, Banks and her “phenomenal” 10-teacher crew instruct at all skill levels and class sizes, teaching classes for teenagers ramping up for sweet 16 parties, couples preparing for weddings and groups of adults. The styles taught at the club range from ballroom to belly dance and they offer one-on-one lessons, group classes and choreography for events.

Continental Dance was founded in Newark as Dale’s Dance Studio in 1958 by dance instructor Paul Stefani and moved to its current Bloomfield center location in 1969. With over 50 years in the dance business, Banks and her staff are familiar with the entire continuum of dance instruction, effortlessly connecting the 70s dance craze the hustle with the present popularity of Latin dance.

“Right now, salsa is the rage,” Banks said. “It’s the most popular dance in the world.”

Dance instructor Fernando Andrade put the dance in historical context.

“It’s mambo footwork with hustle style,” he said.

Andrade said that he found that for his clients, dancing acts as stress relief. The focus and physicality required by dance lets their clients escape the pressures of the real world, he said.

For that reason and others, the Continental has become an important place for its clients.

“I am in a very non serious business that I take very seriously,” Banks said.