crystal ballroom dance studio, San Jose

At her first ballroom-dance lesson, DeeLynn Fields learned, "If you can spell, you can dance." Working through tango steps, she stopped and unpacked t-a-n-g-o. By seeing the word for its individual parts, she reasoned that she could do the same with the dance. Soon after mastering each step, Fields felt them flow together, and a smile bloomed across her face.

That moment—when a student begins to grasp a dance and cracks a smirk—is what Fields lives for and now endeavors to cultivate at Crystal Ballroom Dance Studio. She and her fellow instructors teach beginning and intermediate-level dancers both smooth and Latin forms of ballroom dance, including tango, foxtrot, and other dance forms named after military lingo, and the team's expertise has garnered multiple awards, including a Best of Silicon Valley award from San Jose Mercury News in 2013 and 2015.