| While his father's disapproval wasn't enough to keep him from following his passion, his desire to please his family led Vance to college on a math scholarship ("I hated math! ") where he majored in special education. But Vance would never teach special education. After passing a dance school all year on his way to class, one day in 1978, Vance decided to stop in. "They said, 'Show us how you move,"' Vance says. The rest is history Within six years, Vance made his way from the Baltimore nightclub circuit to Oklahoma City and the largest ballroom and Latin dance school in the world. "It was just huge," Vance remembers. "It was like a factory I went out there and started training and teaching, and I didn't know very much. Within six years, I became the champion of the United States, and I won every competition in the United States and Canada for the next seven years consecutively." Vance's private client list reads like a "Who's Who" of Hollywood elite. The constant professional, he shies from sharing names. He does, however, reveal that on the set of movies such as Shall We Dance and The Honeymooners remake, stars like Vanessa Williams, Richard Gere, Steve Martin, and Goldie Hawn were all a joy to work with. In fact, Vance insists that celebrities tend to be some of his easiest clients. "They say, 'You're the doctor, just do what you do. Tell me what I'm doing wrong."' Aside from the obliging students, Vance admits that life on a movie set isn't as glamorous as one might expect. "It's difficult when you're on a set all the time. Sometimes you can be sitting there for ten hours doing nothing." Then there's the established client base to consider. "Most clients won't wait. After your nine weeks of stardom is over, what do you do for income?" The issue of income was a definite consideration when Vance was contacted by the BBC when the network was scouting talent for Season One of Dancing with the Stars. While dancing on the reality television competition offered guaranteed exposure, it didn't offer a reasonable pay rate. "The stars got all the hoopla," Vance says. "The dancers got nothing. They were only offering what I make in a day for a week's worth of training the stars." Not willing to make his regular clients wait, he passed on the offer, choosing instead to focus on his own projects from his home in Scottsdale the "sanctuary" Vance shares with his partner, renowned designer Charlie Sytek. "When I get home after all the excitement all day, I just want to sit in front of the TV and veg," Vance says, joking, "If I didn't dance every day, I would probably be 250 pounds; I'm always battling weight." It's a statement I find hard to believe. At 47, Vance has the physique of a man half his age. But when you consider the workout he endures every day, it makes sense he should remain so fit. Even after retiring from competition in 1992, Vance continues to dance at least eight hours a day. "If I teach eight hours of Latin dancing, I'm doing eight hours of foot, calf, knee, thigh, butt, stomach, back, chest, arm, and triceps exercises. That's a lot of workout!" In Vance's 29-year career, he has endured only one injury — two displaced vertebrae in the mid-'80s. He attributes his good health to his sport, insisting he has "poor eating habits" and is "typically extremely lazy" Lazy? Besides teaching private dance lessons all over the world, Vance is currently working on promoting the 8th annual People's Choice Dancesport competition to be held at The Ritz-Carlton Phoenix over Memorial Day Weekend. He also markets instructional ballroom dance videos on his website, www.forrestvance.com. There's no denying the surge of popularity ballroom dancing has undergone in the past few years, largely due to the media exposure it has received since Dancing with the Stars first aired. "The sport's always been big, it just never got the media coverage," Vance notes, admitting, "The TV coverage with Dancing with the Stars has really opened, for dancers, a lot of opportunity" Not since the 1940s has this style of dance been so popular. While young men, including Vance, were once discouraged from hitting the dance floor, men of this generation are considering the benefits of knowing a dance step or two. "The girls love it! " exclaims Vance. "I always wanted to be like Gene Kelley," he admits. "I would like to consider myself one of the greats. Even though I've been retired for 15 years, people still talk about my career. I should have been forgotten. I should have been forgotten and on with the new." Nonsense. Everyone knows the new is rarely as good as the original. Make sure your dance card is cleared; the music has only just begun. | 
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