San Francisco Chronicle profiles dancers heading to Cologne

Same-sex dance instructors and champions
Edward Guthmann, Special to The Chronicle

Monday, January 18, 2010
(01-18) 17:33 PST OAKLAND -- When they dance together, Zoe Balfour wears the gowns and feathers, while Citabria Phillips dons the tails and takes the lead. World champions in the growing field of same-sex ballroom dancing, they compete in the international standard ballroom repertoire: waltz, foxtrot, tango, quickstep and Viennese waltz.

Dance partners for the past eight years, they won a gold medal at the Out Games in Copenhagen last summer, and will compete at the Gay Games in Cologne, Germany, in July. They team-teach same-sex dance classes through Dancing with the Queers, and both teach privately as well - Balfour through her business, Trip the Light Fantastic, and Phillips through hers, Light on Your Feet.

Balfour, 52, grew up in Wales and lives in Oakland with her life partner, Roke Noir. Phillips, 38 and single, was reared in Austin, Texas, and also lives in Oakland.

Balfour: Ballroom dancing isn't an event at the regular Olympics. But within the gay world it was embraced as a competitive sport at the Gay Games in Amsterdam in 1998. I came back from that and was looking for a new dance partner.

Within the Bay Area lesbian community, a lot of women identify as butch or femme, rather than androgynous. Both Citabria and I were on the femme side, and we were both looking for a lead.

Phillips: A cute butch lead.

Balfour: We decided that we would try dancing together. And then it became, "Who's going to lead?" We decided we would both lead and both follow, and switch on and off. It's appealing because it's this whole switch of energies between what it means to lead and what it means to follow. But it was very difficult because you have to learn twice as many steps and techniques. It requires a huge amount of mental focus.

Phillips: Everybody's so impressed and loves it when we do switch. But we weren't necessarily working on our strengths - I'm not the best follower so we kept working on making me a better follower instead of working on my strengths as a leader. It got to the point where our coach, Tomas Atkocevicius, said, "Do you want to win or do you want to keep switching?"

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