Remembering Belinda Ricklefs, who taught the Bay Area to do the Lindy hop

Belinda Ricklefs, a ballroom dance and Lindy hop teacher within the Bay Space since 1975, and the founding father of Sunday Swing on the Lake Merritt Dance Middle and Dwell Oak Park, handed away on November 7, 2025, at her nursing house in Pinole. She was 89.

Belinda was born in Los Angeles in 1936 and lived an extended and various life. She began dancing at age 5 and did her first jitterbugging as a young person throughout Friday evening drinks in a church basement. She graduated from Stanford College in 1957 with a BA in Asian historical past (and was a member of Phi Beta Kappa).

In her phrases, she tried to get married, however that “did not work out,” and she or he turned a pc programmer at Lockheed within the early days, “earlier than individuals took courses on how to do this.”

Belinda was an adventurer. She went to France at age 27 as a result of the US was too stifling, and she or he was a “failure” within the sense of what girls within the Fifties had been speculated to be and do. She lived in France for 9 years and made friendships that lasted even over nice distances.

Again within the US, she did bookkeeping for KPFA and labored in motion and dance with the New Shakespeare Firm of San Francisco. However she primarily taught social dancing.

She appreciated swing as a result of it was enjoyable and humorous. Not as many guidelines as tango or different dances. With LaurieAnn Lepoff and others, she started constructing the Lindy group with out imagining the scene at the moment. She befriended and taught with Frankie Manning over the last 15 years of his life as a Lindy Hop ambassador. The Lindyhop is a vigorous associate dance that originated in Harlem within the Nineteen Twenties and Nineteen Thirties.

Belinda was a girl of motion. Her biggest and longest enduring success was instructing individuals to bounce. She stated she was not the instigator of latest and artistic concepts; her power lay in realizing it and persevering within the lengthy course of.

She was disillusioned that she by no means discovered a associate, though she did fall in love a couple of occasions. In her home had been many tapes, minidiscs, CDs, and dance tapes, and years and years of notes on what to show, the right way to educate, rigorously written steps and plans. She was very organized. She revised the lesson plans when issues weren’t going effectively. She additionally had a very good humorousness and helped buddies by way of tough occasions by making them chuckle. She cherished her friendships and her sequence of cats.

Belinda was additionally introspective and began writing when she could not bodily dance very effectively. She wrote a number of tales about her life and household. Her mistrust of presidency and massive drugs led her to discover naturepathy, self-awareness, and therapeutic.

She beloved residing amongst previous buddies within the variety of Oakland. She spent 40 years in her house on Grand Avenue, simply steps from Lake Merritt.

Belinda and her long-time associate Chuck Dee, who retired in 2016 and handed away in September 2025, taught so many Bay Space dancers the right way to have enjoyable, join, swing and convey their sparkle to dancing. Could her spirit stay on.

If you need to make a donation in her honor, the household suggests Cat cityor KQED, KPFA, or your native public radio station.