Triple-Step into Swing: Meet Joel Webber of Dance FXBG

Photography by Karen Presecan Photography & Bluuboltzz Lenz

Every Saturday night in downtown Fredericksburg, a door in a back alley off George Street opens onto a staircase that most passersby never notice. Climb it, and you'll find yourself in a room with a stone wall on one side, a brick wall on the other, and original oak floorboards worn smooth by decades of footsteps — and, these days, by the shuffle-ball-changes of jitterbugs and Lindy Hoppers. This is Dance FXBG, and the man who built it, Joel Webber, wants you to feel like you've stumbled onto something secret.

"I like to call this the Speakeasy entrance," Webber says, describing the route dancers take through the rear alley, up the back stairs, and into the hall. "You come in the rear alley door, then come up the rear stairs, and into the dance hall."

It's a fitting description for a place that runs on old-fashioned charm but has become one of the region's liveliest weekend traditions. Every Saturday, the floor fills from 7:30 to 11 p.m., preceded by a half-hour beginner lesson to get newcomers ready to dance. On Sundays, group lessons split beginners and intermediate/advanced dancers into back-to-back sessions at 6 and 7 p.m., running in a seven-week series that rolls one into the next all year long. Students learn the jitterbug, Lindy Hop, and three styles of Charleston — the vocabulary of East Coast Swing, the dance form Webber has built his entire studio around.

But walk in on any given Saturday, and you won't just hear swing standards. Webber has stitched together a soundtrack that ranges far beyond the genre's roots. "Even though it is a swing dance, we play big band hits, the Beatles, Chuck Berry, Elvis, Big Bad Voodoo Daddy, and more," he says. "You can dance to country, Latin, and Hustle as well." There are line dances woven through the night and dance jams that pull everyone onto the floor at once. A DJ usually runs the dances, though Webber makes a point of bringing in a live band at least once a month.

What keeps people coming back, though, isn't just the music but rather the welcome. Webber has heard it from dancers so many times that he's stopped being surprised by it. "Every week someone will come up to me and thank me for hosting this dance and giving everyone such a fun place to come hang out and dance," he says. He's built the studio so that no one is left standing at the edge of the floor. "Not a problem if you cannot dance, or you do not have a partner, because everyone helps each other out and you get a chance to dance with everyone throughout the night."

That sense of camaraderie doesn't happen by accident. Webber runs Dance FXBG with a small team of co-instructors, Jackie Kimbrell, Cindy Patishnock, and Logan Hooks, who share the teaching load across the studio's Sunday lesson series. Together they've built something dancers describe, in Webber's words, as simply "the best dances around," a phrase he says gets repeated to him often enough that he's come to believe it himself.

Dance FXBG is almost 15 years old now, but it's really just the latest chapter in a life that's had several. Webber spent 20 years in the Navy, earning his degree from St. Leo University while still in uniform. After the Navy, he didn't slow down; instead, he built a 26-year career as a home inspector and a 27-year career as a general contractor, often running both alongside the dance studio. That decades-long career recently found its way onto the page: Webber published "Memoirs of a Home Inspector," a book chronicling his years walking through other people's houses, now available on Amazon and other retailers. He's already at work on a second book, one he expects will eventually stretch into a third.

"I am currently writing a second book, which will eventually turn into a third, and probably my final book," Webber says, "but we'll see."

It's a line that captures something essential about him — a restless curiosity that refuses to settle into any one identity. When he's not teaching a lesson or spinning records for a Saturday night crowd, Webber is likely singing karaoke, picking up one of his guitars, or hunting for hidden gems in artisan shops. He and his family are avid travelers, with cruises a favorite way to see the world. And there's plenty of family to travel for: Webber has five children and sixteen grandchildren, a sprawling crew involved in what he calls "way too many activities" for him to keep up with, though he tries.

That same instinct for gathering people together, whether it's family or strangers who've never done a Lindy Hop turn in their life, is what has made Dance FXBG feel less like a business and more like a standing invitation. Beginners who show up not knowing a single step are folded into the half-hour lesson before the music starts, and by the time the DJ or live band gets going, most of them are already out on the floor, trading turns with strangers who'll be friends by the end of the night.

For Webber, that's really the whole point. Twenty years in the Navy, decades in home inspection and contracting, a book on the shelves and another on the way, and still, it's the sound of feet on old oak floors, framed by stone and brick, that seems to matter most.

Fredericksburg has plenty of downtown nightlife, but few can say they have the tradition Dance FXBG maintains. And for the regulars who've made the climb up the secret staircase and shared music, laughs, and countless dances, the speakeasy entrance symbolizes a special community, built by Webber and his passion for music and dance, one Saturday night at a time.