Let’s Dance: Confessions of a Professional Cruise Ship Dance Partner

(Photo: iStock)

There is a time-honored maritime tradition of performing menial tasks aboard a ship to earn your passage. But apparently there’s a way to earn your keep aboard a ship sailing around the world that’s much more fun than swabbing the deck: shaking your groove thing!

On two of its cruise ships, the Crystal Symphony and Crystal Serenity, luxury cruise line Crystal Cruises employs “Ambassador Hosts,” whose main job is to serve as dance partners for passengers.

“I love to travel, dance and meet people, so this was a perfect fit” says Jim Battaglia, 68, who became a Crystal Cruises Ambassador Host in 2010 after his retirement. He says he and his fellow Ambassador Hosts (often four per cruise, but some sailings have as many as 12) cater to solo travelers and women sailing with guys who don’t like to dance.

Cruising without a dance partner? Jim Battaglia will hit the dance floor with you! (Photo: Jim Battaglia)

“We have singles, sisters, mothers and daughters, divorcees and widows,” Battaglia tells Yahoo Travel. “We also have some that cruise with their husbands and their husbands don’t dance. So the husbands go to the casino and the wives come to dance with us!”

So what’s it like to provide fun and comfort to single women at sea (but not too much fun and comfort)? Right before Battaglia embarked on a 60-day stint aboard the Crystal Serenity’s “World Cruise” around the Pacific, he shared with Yahoo Travel his confessions of being a professional cruise ship dance partner.

The Job

According to Crystal Cruise’s job description, one of the Ambassador Host’s chief duties is to “invite solo guests to dance, as well as guests whose partners may not wish to dance” and “to encourage camaraderie and to support the myriad of opportunities for ballroom dancing on board its ships.”

For Battaglia, that means pretty much dancing the night away, every night.

“Every night at 5:15, before the first dinner, we have dancing with a band for 45 minutes,” he says. That’s followed by dinner with the guests, another of the Ambassador Host’s duties.“ They usually put us with a table of single ladies,” Battaglia says.

Jim Battaglia’s office: the Crystal Serenity. (Photo: Crystal Cruises)

Then there’s much more dancing. “There’s another dance session from 7:45 p.m. to 8:30 for the late seating,” he says. “Then from 9 to midnight or 9:30 to 12:30 there’s more ballroom dancing. So we get about three to four hours worth of dancing [per night].” Makes your feet hurt just thinking about it.

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Battaglia says those dance-heavy schedules appeal to passengers. “A lot of the ladies only come on the ship to dance,” he says. And these passengers give Battaglia high marks. “They say I’m very easy to dance with,” he says. “I’m a very good leader. I’m very sociable. I usually sing to them while we’re dancing. Some of them like it. Some of them don’t. Some tell me that for a singer, I’m a pretty good dancer.”

Yes, Most Ambassador Hosts Are Men

Crystal Cruises explains the heavily-male makeup of its Ambassador Hosts corps by noting there tends to be more unattached women on its cruises than unattached men.

“I guess they tried having some female hostesses but there’s never enough men to dance with,” Battaglia says. “If an [unattached] guy comes on the ship, there’s plenty of ladies for him to dance with.” Single guys, take note: if you cruise solo, you will likely have a very full dance card.

Casual or Novice Dancers Need Not Apply

Don’t think that just any guy with two feet and a pulse can just waltz aboard a cruise ship (pun intended) and get a gig dancing with ladies for a living. Crystal requires its hosts to be expert dancers trained in a variety of styles, including samba, swing, tango, waltz, mambo, rhumba, meringue, cha-cha, and the foxtrot.

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Battaglia wasn’t always such a top-flight dancer. “I had never really ballroom danced, but I took tap dancing when I was a kid,” he says. “In the early `90’s I got into country dancing."

Battaglia has since expanded his dance game. "I’m adept at all the ballroom, salsa and latin dances,” he says. “I know them all now.”

Dancing Diplomacy Required

There are some serious etiquette rules involved in being a professional cruise ship dance partner. One: try not to outclass your dance partners, who come at a variety of skill levels.

“We get some really good dancers, we get some ladies who are on the border, and then some who don’t know how to dance,” Battaglia says. “You have to dance to the ladies’ level of competence. So within a couple of dances you can gauge how well they can dance. I dance to their level. If they ask [questions about dancing], I can explain to them.”

And while they’re happy to answer any dance-related questions their partners may have, these professional dance partners must remember that they’re supposed to be dancing for fun, not playing dance instructor. “You never want to teach them or correct them while you’re on the dance floor,” he says. “Some of them do take offense. For the most part they’re all very agreeable.”

Plus, Ambassador Hosts are forbidden from playing favorites. “There’s a rotation,” Battaglia says. “We’re not supposed to dance with the same lady more than once. Some of the ladies watch and say, ‘Oh you danced with her twice and you only danced with me once.’ So yeah, you have to be very diplomatic.”

Absolutely, Positively No Dancing of the Other Kind…

Just like crew members, cruise ship dance partners are forbidden from getting too close to passengers while on board.

“That’s very important: no relationships,” says Battaglia. “Some hosts have been thrown off the ship because they were seen showing partiality to different ladies. They’re walking and holding hands, which is a no-no, and stuff like that.”

Battaglia says adhering to that rule can be a little difficult because after a few spins on the dance floor, some women have more than dancing on their minds.

“Especially after a night of drinking, some of these ladies are handsy,” Battaglia admits. “Not all of them, but they can get a little frisky. I tell them it’s not worth it for me to get thrown off the ship. So I usually try to nip it in the bud. You have to set your parameters. After the cruise is over, what you do on your own time is up to you but you can’t go flaunting anything on the ship.”

Not that it’s a struggle for Battaglia to keep things platonic. "I was raised very properly,” he laughs. “I had a Catholic upbringing.”

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You just might get served by a centenarian

Battaglia talks about one of his favorite dance partners. “We have this one lady, she’s 101 years old now,” he says. “She never started dancing until she was in her 80’s, after her husband passed away. She’s a little disabled. She can’t see too well. She can’t walk but she comes to dance every night.”

Despite her age, though, this passenger did not want to be treated like some delicate flower. “She really likes to run around the dance floor; her favorite dance with me is the quickstep.” Battaglia says. “She doesn’t want you to be easy with her” — a fact Battaglia and his colleagues had to learn the hard way.

“When the guys started dancing with her, because of her age, they tried to be real gentle with her,” Battaglia laughs. “And she said, 'is that all you can do?’"

Hope someone called the ship’s buffet, because it sounds like Battaglia and company got served!

The job isn’t just dancing

Ambassador Hosts also are expected to participate in group dance classes, dine with guests and mingle at social functions and cocktail parties.

"You know, I socialize a lot,” Battaglia says. “In the daytime I’m all over the ship. I’ll play backgammon. I’ll play Scrabble.”

Battaglia says he also hosts tour excursions. “It’s a great way to see the ports,” he says. “You just keep track of the passengers and make sure nobody gets lost, nobody gets hurt. Well that’s a full day. We start out in the morning and then we dance the night away.”

It’s Hard on the Body

Battaglia says the hardest part of his job is the toll it takes on his body. “We dance on a marble floor and it’s very rough on the knees,” Battaglia says of one of the ship’s dancing venues. All that dancing can leave one as banged-up as a pro athlete. “Every night I get back to my room, I ice my knees. I ice my shoulder. I’m good to go in the morning.”

Because of the grueling dancing, Battaglia says he can only sail a few months at a time. “Usually three months is my limit,” he says, adding, “I need a 1,000-dance tune up every three months!”

One of the perks of the job: seeing the world. Here’s Jim in Greece. (Photo: Jim Battaglia)

The Job is Unpaid, But the Perks Aren’t Bad

“I call it my volunteer work,” Battaglia says of his job. While Ambassador Hosts aren’t paid, they do get to travel on the ships for free. “We get room and board,” he says. “We usually get our own cabins. Once in a while, when they’re fully booked, we have to share a cabin, but that’s no problem.”

Plus, after an Ambassador Host is assigned three or more consecutive cruises, Crystal starts paying to fly them to and from the ship. “I earn the [frequent flier] mileage, which is pay in itself,” Battaglia says. “So I take all my private trips on them. It really works out well.”

It all makes for the perfect retirement job. “I can’t imagine what I would have been doing if I wasn’t doing this,” Battaglia says. “I live in Buffalo, New York, so my main goal is to get out of the city in the winter. I have this opportunity every year to be on part of the world cruise. We’re always in a warm climate. So that’s been the major advantage for me. I love seeing all the different ports. I’ve been to 103 countries, so far since I started this job.”

You’ll Make Friends for Life

“This clientele can afford to go on multiple cruises,” Battaglia says (World Cruises aboard the Crystal Serenity start at just over $36,000). “You get the same repeat customers every year. I’ve made some lifelong friends by doing this, from all over the world. So I have places to stay.”

Some of those friendships extend off ship, too. Battaglia talks of one passenger friendship that led to a high-flying adventure. “Nothing romantic or anything; we were strictly platonic,” Battaglia says. “We met in New York with a few friends. Then we flew on [the passenger’s] private plane from New York to Reno, Nevada. So that was a nice benefit.”

It’s almost hard to fathom how a little thing like dancing with someone can mean so much. But Battaglia says he’s shocked by how much passengers appreciate what he does. “I’ll get a lot of ladies that say, 'Oh I haven’t danced in 20 years’ or 'I haven’t danced since my husband passed away,’” he says. “The most benefiting for me is at the end of every cruise, a lot of the ladies say, 'You made my cruise very special.’ That makes me feel like I’m doing a really good job.”

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