Mount Gambier Debutante Ball

Friday June 30, 2023

Mr BELL (Mount Gambier) (15:09): I rise to discuss community values and looking to the past to see those values and portray them into the future. I think many times we look around our communities, and we certainly have a very close, collaborative community in Mount Gambier. I attended an event on Friday night that gave me pause to reflect on these values. It was an amazing event of well over 400 community members coming together: the event was my first debutante ball. The community came together to celebrate a group of 32 young men and women.

Whilst the traditional meaning of the deb ball has changed over the years, many aspects are still relevant to today's society. What is now known as the Dancers Ball began as the Caledonian Ball, and it has been a Mount Gambier tradition for well over 60 years. During the 1970s and 1980s, the young women and men were instructed by Margaret Reichelt of Margaret Cleves School of Dancing. In 1982, Margaret's daughter, Maria Slape, made her own debut and then began assisting her mother and took over the institution in the mid-1980s.

Maria now runs her own successful dance studio, MJ Dance Studio. In the late 1990s the Caledonian Ball was cancelled. However, over the next few years Maria was approached by some of her students to bring back the deb ball, and in 2001 the first Dancers Ball was held at the Barn Palais. It has now been running for 19 years. Many of the traditions of the Caledonian Ball are still present today, a factor Maria felt was important in keeping the debutante ball going.

The young women wear a tartan sash and are encouraged to research their family history to find if they have any Scottish connection—something almost half of this year's debs managed to do. Many of the girls also had a piece of jewellery or a brooch that belonged to a grandmother or a great-grandmother. Debutantes were piped down by bagpiper Janet Bellinger and presented to Mount Gambier Mayor Lynette Martin. The performed a choreographed dance, the Gay Gordons and the Queen's Waltz, with someone significant in their lives.

While some may say the debutante ball is now an outdated notion, I would like to focus on the positive aspects that it provides. Thirty-two young men and women from all four of Mount Gambier's senior schools gave up their Friday nights for six weeks to learn the dances for the evening. It was a wonderful opportunity to forge friendships with others outside their usual social circles. It takes a great deal of courage and confidence to get up and dance in front of 400 people—family, friends and strangers. It was something completely outside their comfort zone. It starts conversations, with many of the young men and women hearing about their own parents', aunties' and uncles' stories of their experiences and the traditions that have been passed down.

Each year, the MC of the evening is a senior dancer from MJ Dance Studio. On Friday night, the task was given to 19-year-old Mia Bellinger, and what an amazing job she did. I would like to thank Maria Slape, MJ Dance Studios and the Barn Palais for continuing to host this worthwhile community event. It was wonderful to see so many residents of all ages coming together for a social evening and celebrating our young people of today in such a positive way.

On a personal note, my son did the deb ball and it is a memory that will stay with him forever because he took his grandma and did a dance that he had practised and that they ended up practising together. It is a memory that will live on forever. What really struck me was a community coming together, having discussions (when you know probably half the room, if not more), and people coming together as a community on a Friday night to really encourage the young people in our community and celebrate the efforts they have put in. It was truly an amazing experience and it gave me a real chance to sit back and reflect on what a great community we have in Mount Gambier.

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