In 2001,Sterling and Dottie Nichols who live in Williamsburg wanted to learn to shag. They arranged for Larry Williams who brought Cindy Goree along to help teach about 15 couples the basic shag. The first couple of sessions were taught in Colonial Williamsburg in the Drum & Fife Bugle Corp practice hall! The classes bounced around from place to place-in Williamsburg for about a year. At that time we had run out of places to go and had a large church group from Newport News taking lessons.
On year later, Larry Williams turned over the classes to Cindy Goree and Larry Black. Their task was to find a place on the Peninsula to continue the shag dance classes. While looking around, Cindy and Larry stumbled into Mitty’s Nightclub located in the Omni Hotel and spoke with Ketch Kelly. Ketch was willing to give us a try. Though we have bounced from night to night at Mitty’s, Tuesday in now shag night! Thanks again to Sterling who thought an article in the paper would help things a bit…and that it did. People still remember the article that got us going! Thus Shag N 4 U was borne!
After teaching for several months, there was no place on the Peninsula for our students to dance, so Larry and Cindy began the ‘”Williamsburg/Peninsula Wanna Be Shag” Parties. Well the idea caught on…people kept saying, “So when are you going to start a shag club?” Never in our wildest dreams did we think a shag club would take hold on the Peninsula. Others had tried in the past and it didn’t stick. We had people sign up who were interested in starting a shag club.
In the fall of 2001, there was a meeting of people interested in starting a shag club. Over 20 people came. Volunteers stepped up to create a board of directors.
On December 16, 2001, Colonial Shag Club became a reality. Shag Lovers were eager to join. Many people from surrounding clubs like Boogie on the Bay and Virginia Beach Shag Club had members who lived on the Peninsula joined and were grateful to have a shag club in their back yard.
In the first year, look at what we accomplished:
Wrote Colonial Shag Club By Laws
Had a fund raiser to assist our Junior National Shag Dance Championship competitors
Had over 30 members attend Spring SOS (1/3 of our members)
Representatives and interested members went to Charlotte for the ACSC(Association of Carolina Shag Club’s) summer workshop to submit our application to become a full fledged member of the ACSC
Fall 2002 SOS, Colonial Shag Club was voted in
Shag N 4 U offers discounts to members for dance classes
Hosted a day long party with workshops
Donated to our charity – Menchville House
Over 105 people joined
Held monthly dances
Threw a GREAT Christmas Party with over 100 people attending!
January 2003, marked our first anniversary and membership renewals came flooding in! For that we are grateful and feel confident that Colonial Shag Club is here to stay!
