What is NFDA?
The New Frontier Dance Association, or ‘NFDA’ as is it affectionately known, grew from the original group called ‘Melbourne Bootscoot’. Founded in the late 80’s in gay old Melbourne, it was originally a gay men’s institution at the Laird Hotel on Sunday nights. Deciding to change the name to New Frontier Dance Association was easy after the group found it was doing more than just bootscooting or line dancing. After factoring in the partner dancing of two-step, waltz, polka and progressive circle dances, plus the new addition of Clogging (an old country form of tap dance), the decision for the name change was easy. Now that the girls were starting to get involved, things would change for the bigger and better! Although NFDA has been established officially for 18 years, this group has been around a lot longer.
The early 1990’s saw the group grow, slowly at first, but by the mid-90’s it became a major outing for Gay and Lesbians across Melbourne and its fringes, and a destination for our friends from other states and overseas! By 1993, NFDA and the Laird Hotel entered an arrangement to host dancing on Sunday nights, which became extremely popular.
In addition to dancing at the Laird, NFDA settled into Mulcahy’s Hotel in North Melbourne, a great ex theatre restaurant pub with a small function bar downstairs and a big function room upstairs, which was originally a bikers’ pub. After starting one week downstairs, the next week the bikers were downstairs and NFDA upstairs, which started the ball rolling for what would be a massive and eventful 4 years of weekly dancing.
Becoming so popular at one stage, NFDA had social dancing on Thursday and Sunday nights at The Laird Hotel, and Friday and Saturday nights at Mulcahy’s. Line Dancing and Two-Stepping classes were generally held at St Marks Church Hall in Fitzroy and grew from 5 or 6 people to 80 to 100 every Tuesday and Wednesday nights. Monday nights we began our teaching program for clogging at St Marks and although still a major part of NFDA, we would call them The Rainbow Cloggers. Throughout this period we would continue to grow through social nights, classes, promotion and demos. At one stage some of us were dancing on Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday! With the amount of interest from our community, a dedicated committee of volunteers continued to provide support and made all events tick like clockwork, of which a small and dedicated group still assist today.
The annual dance, Frontier, started out as a men’s dance at the North Melbourne Dance Hall, then moving to various venues until the crowd became so big they had to hire Collingwood Town Hall. Our biggest events were in the mid 90’s with over 600 Gays and Lesbians from all over Australia converging to the annual dance.
NFDA is still going strong today, passing puberty and now a young adult. Today Frontier attracts Gays, Lesbians and all their straight friends creating a friendly, inclusive night; diversity and tolerance at its proudest moment is a good way to describe it!
Gay venues and society have changed drastically since then with NFDA finding a home at a mixed venue, the Bendigo Hotel in Johnston Street Collingwood. Classes and socials are held on Thursday nights at the hotel, and NFDA holds several smaller Saturday workshops and night time socials, called “Round Up” at halls around Melbourne throughout the year. We continue our tradition of Frontier with Frontier 18 coming up on August 30th 2008. All are welcome and if you need any more information, please visit us at www.nfda.net.au or email us at nfda.melb@yahoo.com.au
