As DanceFeverDave, he boogies across Eugene to spread joy

Dave Rothman has a chronic case of dance fever — and baby, it’s contagious. 

If you have seen a stray dancing man around Eugene — boogieing in Kesey Square, busting a move in Target, or even cha-chaing in a dentist’s office near you, there’s a solid chance it was Rothman. At 71 years old, he has reinvented himself as a fledgling YouTuber named “DanceFeverDave.”

Rothman said that being DanceFeverDave is more than a retirement hobby. He’s on a mission to inspire people to shake off shame and get to dancing in the street, which he sees as both a benefit to personal happiness and a vital source of joy in dark times.

“When I was younger, I was really, really concerned about what people thought about me when I danced,” he said. “But at this point, right now, I’m 71 years old, I don’t really care.”

How he caught dance fever 

Born and raised in Napa, California, Rothman has called the Eugene area home for around 33 years, previously running a ministry for an independent Christian church in Pleasant Hill before pivoting to work for Comcast.

He was separating from his first wife when he decided to start grooving. He had never been a big dancer before that, but went for it after years of seeing dancing on-screen.

“I watched ‘Dancing With the Stars,’ and I looked at them, and thought, ‘I could do that,’” he said.

He’s since ventured into West Coast Swing and annual “Thrill the World” dancing to Michael Jackson’s “Thriller,” but prefers ecstatic dance, a free-form style where people just follow whatever movement feels right in the moment. 

Dance is a form of higher power for Rothman, who is sober and attends Al-Anon meetings to cope with a family background of alcoholism. (His father, he said, was a dancer too, but only when he was tipsy. “He would cut a rug,” Rothman said. “But he would cut his pants.”)

Rothman’s sobriety has surprised some of the people he has danced with, especially in bars. There was one young man he challenged to dance who wanted to buy him a drink in return.

“He goes, really?” Rothman recounted. “I go, ‘No. My high is dancing.’”

He also does not require music to dance, just the groove in his heart. That does make it easier to be recorded dancing in public, where he asks random people he encounters to film him.

In his YouTube channel videos, Rothman dances at Costco, Trader Joe’s, his dentist’s office, at the Cuthbert Amphitheater, in piles of leaves (set to The Mamas and the Papas song “California Dreamin’” for the appropriate “All the leaves are brown” lyric), and pretty much wherever he is struck by the impulse to start dancing.

Last summer, Rothman was dancing to a drum circle at the Portland Saturday Market when two men started recording his moves for their YouTube channel, before encouraging Rothman to start a channel of his own. They asked what he might call it, and he had the answer ready: DanceFeverDave.

But being “DanceFeverDave” precedes the YouTube presence — it was his username on the online dating service where he met his now-wife and dance partner, Lorrance Herring. 

“I was surprised to find out that I married DanceFeverDave,” Herring said. “I didn’t know. That was just his Plenty of Fish handle.”

Now, she’s more than DanceFeverDave’s wife. When there isn’t a useful passerby who can man the phone, she’s the person behind the camera filming Rothman as he dances in public. (And reminding him of what they actually came to Costco or Target to buy, outside of the boogieing.)

Dancing through life, and loss

In recent years, Rothman has been dancing through a series of grave personal losses. His mother, Patty, died in 2022 at 92 years old. The next year his 32-year-old son, Joel, died from brain cancer. In January 2025 his dad, Marvin, died at 97. 

But that heaviness hasn’t stopped him from dancing. If anything, it renewed his purpose. 

He remembers recently being in a local mall, listening to music and doing a little move where he undulated his arm while his fingers were interlocked. A group of nine young men were walking in the mall. One of them, he said, looked exactly like Joel. 

The look-alike made eye contact with Rothman, and did the little arm-dance move in return. Rothman took it as a sign from his son. “What a God shot,” he recalls thinking. He started crying.

“Even though my son’s passed away, he wants me to dance,” Rothman said, reflecting on the moment. “He wants me to live life. He doesn’t want me just to sit and be sad and be depressed. He wants me to go out and do what I do best.”