America’s dance floors have come a long way from powdered wigs, petticoats and rigid propriety. But on Friday, March 8, students in Elizabeth Tavasci’s West Sedona School classroom took a small two-step back in time to share an 18th-century dance with the nation’s most iconic figure — George Washington.

That afternoon, Tavasci’s class of first- and second-grade students was led by dance instructor Dana DeLuz as part of the city of Sedona’s Artists in the Classroom initiative.

DeLuz, who has been visiting Verde Valley classrooms for years, fuses her expertise in movement with social studies by connecting students to the dances that important historical figures enjoyed, going beyond the ballrooms to explain how these dances were indicative of the wider cultural movements of the time.

A few weeks prior, Tavasci’s class had learned about Abraham Lincoln, the Emancipation Proclamation and the dance of his day — the waltz. Now, it was time to learn the minuet, a favorite of America’s first president, who was reportedly a masterful dancer. “We had talked about George Washington and Abraham Lincoln because in February we had President’s Day, their birth­days, so we had reached out to Dana through the Artist in the Classroom’s program, because history is really hard at this age,” Tavasci said. “To even understand time is really hard, so this was just a way for them to see life and dance back then and compare it to now.”

“George Washington was tall, but do you remember how tall Lincoln was?” DeLuz asked the kids, who were seated around her in a semicircle at first.

“He was like this,” a boy said while standing up and reaching as high as he possibly could — though quite a bit shy of Lincoln’s 6’4” stature and even Washington’s 6’0”.

In addition to teaching about the figures, DeLuz constantly asked the students to compare and contrast what they had learned about Lincoln’s era with facts they were learning about Washington’s. How did they differ from our time?

She also explained that Washington, admired by all for his military feats as general in the war for independence, was the only U.S. president to have received a unanimous vote from the Electoral College — teaching the word unanimous in the process. “So, everybody liked him,” one student repeated in a hushed, awed tone.

DeLuz explained that the dance parties he would throw involved way stricter etiquette than even Lincoln’s dances. “Lincoln could go up to a lady and ask her to dance. In Washington’s day, that was too forward. People had to bow and curtsy,” she said. She explained how men couldn’t take off their jackets even if they were hot and how ladies had to wear large, often uncom­fortable dresses.

She showed students a video of a couple dressed up in 18th-century attire dancing the minuet, which spurred students to comment on both the beauty and silliness of the era’s ostentatious fashion. After DeLuz played a couple minuet songs and explained the time signa­ture and basic structure of each, she asked the students to stand and practice bows and curtsies.

A line of girls and a line of boys faced each other as giggles abounded. After several attempts, both groups got the hang of their respective courtesies. Then, it was time to pair up and form the collective line characteristic of the minuet.

Having been assured that they don’t actually have to touch, the girls simulated putting one hand over their boy partner’s and the pairs proceeded to step to the music. All the partners faced one another, creating a lane through which one pair at a time would dance. At the end, a delicate series of turns and dips would cap off the dance, and the couple would return to the collective line until every couple had passed through and their turn was up again.

There were more boys than girls, so some boys volunteered to dance down the lane with multiple girls — chivalry isn’t dead.

At first, timidity pervaded the classroom-turned-dance floor. But, after a few itera­tions and more interesting moves were introduced, the students began relaxing and having fun.

Some students even danced down the lane with expressions of pride. Several girls who were helping comprise the dancing lane began singing the same song in rhythm to the orchestral music; Tavasci smiled and said that it was a song sung at family quinceañeras — the students were making the antiquated dance of a founding father their own.

“I’ve been teaching in this area since 2004, [everyone] from the age of 3 to 93,” Deluz said, adding that she is currently teaching swing to students at Sedona Red Rock High School. “Whenever I teach at the upper levels, I let the kids choose because I want them to like the dance. The concepts that we take from the AZ Standards can fit any dance style.”

“I work with Ms. Isom at the high school in the AP U.S. history class and I taught them the Charleston because they were studying the Roaring ’20s. We did a lot of connections about how what was happening in society was reflected in the dance moves,” DeLuz said. “What happened was exactly what our aim was, it was to bring that period to life. What were these human beings feeling back then? They were rejecting the values of their parents.” DeLuz said that she received thank-you cards from the high schoolers, some even begging her to come back and teach them about the culture of the 1950s and ’60s. “The kids of the ’60s totally rejected the way their parents lived their life and they totally rejected the dance styles of their parents, much like the kids of the ’20s. They said ‘Forget the ballroom dances, we’re going to dance what we want to dance.’ And the kids of the ’60s said, ‘No, keep your cha-cha, keep your foxtrot, we’re just going to dance with each other freely on the dance floor.’”

In her professional busi­ness, which she conducts out of her eponymous studio in Clarkdale, DeLuz specializes in a variety of social dances — mostly partnered dances — like the waltz, foxtrot, tango and salsa.

At the end of her session with Tavasci’s class, DeLuz allowed the students five minutes to show her dance moves they’ve been practicing. Several boys hit the floor to perform The Worm in synchronized fashion, a girl twirled gracefully like a ballerina and one boy even did some breakdancing; a far cry from Washington’s dance parties for sure, but every bit as American.