Belinda Ricklefs, a ballroom dance and Lindy hop instructor in the Bay Area since 1975, and the founder of Sunday Swing at the Lake Merritt Dance Center and Live Oak Park, passed away on Nov. 7, 2025, at her care home in Pinole. She was 89.
Born in Los Angeles in 1936, Belinda lived a long and varied life. She started dancing at age 5, and did her first jitterbugging as a teenager at Friday night socials in a church basement. She graduated from Stanford University with a BA in Asian History (and was a Phi Beta Kappa member) in 1957.
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In her words, she tried getting married, but that “did not cook,” and she became a computer programmer at Lockheed in the early days, “before people took classes in how to do that.”
Belinda was an adventurer. She went to France at age 27 because the US was too stifling, and she was a “failure” according to what women were supposed to be and do in the ‘50s. She lived in France for 9 years, making friendships that endured even at long distances.
Belinda Ricklefs and her cat Motzi. Credit: Courtesy Ricklefs family
Back in the USA, she did bookkeeping for KPFA and worked on movement and dance with the New Shakespeare Company of San Francisco. But mostly she taught social dancing.
She liked swing because it was fun and funny. Not as many rules as tango or other dances. With LaurieAnn Lepoff and others, she began to build the Lindy community, never imagining the scene that exists today. She became friends and taught with Frankie Manning in the last 15 years of his life as the ambassador of Lindy hop. The Lindy hop is a lively partner dance that originated in Harlem in the 1920s and 1930s.
Belinda was a woman of action. Her greatest and longest-lasting success was teaching people to dance. She said she was not the instigator of new and creative ideas; her strength was in making them happen and hanging in with persistence through the long process.
She was disappointed that she never found a mate, although she did fall in love a couple of times. Her home held many, many music tapes, MiniDiscs, CDs, and dance tapes, and years and years of notes about what to teach, how to teach, carefully written-out steps, and plans. She was very organized. She revised lesson plans when things weren’t going well. She also had a good sense of humor and helped friends through hard times by getting them to laugh. She treasured her friendships and her series of cats.
Belinda was also introspective, taking up writing when she physically couldn’t dance as much. She wrote several stories about her life and family. Her distrust of the government and big medicine led her to explore naturepathy, self-awareness, and healing.
She loved living in the diversity of Oakland among long-time friends. She spent 40 years in her home off Grand Avenue, steps from Lake Merritt.
Belinda and her long-time teaching partner, Chuck Dee, who retired in 2016 and passed away in September 2025, taught so many Bay Area dancers how to have fun, connect, swing out, and bring their shine to dancing. May her spirit live on.
If you would like to make a donation in her honor, the family suggests Cat Town, or KQED, KPFA, or your local public radio station.
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