Tuesday, June 17, 2025
It’s wedding season in Long Beach, and one local woman is trying to make sure everyone feels ready for, and comfortable about, that first dance.
Eileen Clarke, 58, grew up in Astoria, Queens, the daughter of Irish immigrants who used music and dance as a way to honor their heritage. Clarke, who has two sisters and one brother, began learning Irish dance when she was 5.
“We did a few nights a week, and the whole family did it,” she recalled. “For them it was a way of just not feeling like they were in such a foreign land. There was always music going on in the house, and we were the entertainment after dinner. The kids were brought out, and it was like, ‘Oh, give us a little show.’”
Though it wasn’t her choice at first, she ended up loving dance, and explored more varieties as she got older. She tried jazz, contemporary, flamenco and ballroom, and continued throughout high school.
Afterward she attended Boston University, where she studied journalism. For the first semester of her sophomore year, she studied abroad in Madrid for six months. While there, she met a fellow BU student doing the same thing, Jerry Ambroise. They hit it off, and when they got back to Boston, they took a ballroom dance class together. Now they have been married for more than 30 years.
After graduating from BU in 1988, Clarke interned at the Queens Tribune, and her first job was with F.I.G.S. Form, a horse racing publication that rated thoroughbreds to help bettors decide which horse to put their money on. She used the Spanish she learned in Madrid from time to time when she interviewed jockeys.
She worked for New York magazine for four years as an editorial assistant, began freelancing for Entertainment Weekly in 1996 and transitioned to a full-time position as an editor from 1998 to 2008. She and Ambroise moved to Long Beach in 1999, and had three children, Dylan, Stella and Summer. Clarke wasn’t happy with her work-life balance, so she started looking for something else.
“I started teaching dance when my girls were little, and I really wanted them to learn flamenco, because I had studied that for many years,” she said. “I started studying flamenco when I was 30, because I saw it at the Y in the city, and I was like, ‘What’s that sound?’ I saw these women in beautiful black skirts playing castanets, so I did that. I would go to Spain every few years and study intensely there, doing workshops. There were also great teachers in New York City, from Spain, so that became my thing away from being a mom, that I could do that was for me, and I loved it.”
Her love turned into teaching more than just her children. She began teaching a children’s dance class at Círculo de la Hispanidad in Long Beach in 2010, and took a job with Dancing Classrooms Long Island, an East Patchogue-based nonprofit, that year. She taught 10-week-long dance courses at Long Island schools, and even became Dancing Classrooms’ executive director, until 2021.
Clarke always gave people she knew, or those who sought her out, private lessons as well. She eventually decided that she wanted to do more of that, so, last September, she started her own company, First Dance Long Island. But she needed to find a space where she could teach, so she called almost every church and temple in Long Beach. She now rents out the basement of St. James of Jerusalem Episcopal Church, on West Penn Street.
She teaches group classes every other Wednesday, and changes the style of dance being taught every two months. Currently it’s East Coast Swing. She continues to offer private lessons for those who want to learn to dance for anniversaries, sweet 16s, bar and bat mitzvahs and, of course, weddings.
Clarke sometimes helps couples explore song possibilities for their first dance. Others come in with a song they want, but just don’t know how to dance to it. No matter what they need, she’s ready to help, and teach.
“I see what their abilities are, and I give them a dance that suits them,” she explained. “I don’t want them ever to feel uncomfortable. I want them to look natural while they’re dancing — that’s important to me. I want them to feel like, ‘Hey, we got this.’”
Bryan Pujol and Casey Pues are one of those couples, getting married at the end of the month. Neither has any background in formal dance, and they came to Clarke in February. All they knew was the song they wanted, “Lavender Girl,” by Caamp. Now, six classes later, they’re ready to wow on the dance floor.
“She really made us feel calm and comfortable,” Pues said. “She’s so inviting, and she really breaks the steps down for us in a way that we can understand. She’s very conscious of our skill level, and I feel like she suits the dance to what we can do.”
