I have two main goals in life: cover the Olympics as a reporter and win the Mirrorball Trophy on “Dancing with the Stars.”
As someone who danced for 13 years across many styles of ballet, tap, jazz, hip hop, lyrical and more, I’ve always been half-convinced I could go far on the show.
This past November, “Dancing with the Stars” celebrated the end of its 33rd season and 500th episode, with the finale garnering its highest ratings in four years. More than six million people tuned in to ABC or Disney+ to see who took home the mirrorball.
After spending my fall and winter nights watching the show with my roommates and feeling a deep desire to dance again after six years, I decided to head to the ballroom.
Society Hill Dance Academy on Passyunk Avenue in Philadelphia has options for a drop-in social ease class every Monday and Wednesday. For $20, you can participate in a beginner group ballroom class with the style of ballroom varying per class. They offer classes in salsa, swing, rumba, foxtrot, merengue, tango, waltz and more.
Anastasia Korbal ’22, a former member of the SJU Dance Team and an instructor for Dancing Classrooms, a 10-week program that brings ballroom dancing to fifth-grade classes across Philadelphia, said for college students specifically, taking ballroom classes allows people to “learn more about yourself as an adult.”
“Ballroom is a social dance, and that’s the same thing that is really implemented when we’re teaching the kids,” Korbal said. “It’s about learning something new, getting outside of your comfort zone, but also connecting with other people, especially in college or as you’re leaving college, too, entering post grad life.”
With my post-grad life less than two months away, I convinced one of my roommates, Katie McCole ’25, to join me for a Monday night rumba class.
We arrived at the studio about 15 minutes early and waited on a bench, watching a couple finish a lesson for their first dance at their wedding, our nerves increasing with every second.
Finally, it was time for the class to begin. We lined up with about 12 other pairs as the instructor, Masha Zelen, made us tap our foot to the slow beat and the quick beat of the music, just feeling the rhythm.
That was all it took for me to feel at ease.
From there, we learned a basic box step, repeating the pattern of slow-quick-quick, slow-quick-quick multiple times until we got the hang of it. Then, it was time to partner up.
The room was split into two lines of leaders and followers. I told Katie, who didn’t have much dance experience, that I would be the leader as we got into our respective lines and turned to face each other. Only we mixed up the two, and Katie was tasked with the responsibility of leading. It was no big deal until it became time to switch partners, a surprise neither of us were prepared for.
While Katie stayed in place, I shifted to the left to greet my new partner, working my way down the line, dancing with people like Oz Burgos, a participant in the class who has been taking lessons since December.
Burgos said the classes have helped him feel more confident on a dance floor.
“One, it’s great for just getting over that fear of embarrassment,” Burgos said. “And two, it’s great to meet people as well.”
While I had one partner ask if I had done ballroom classes before, calling me “a natural,” there were a number of challenges that came with the experience, too. The biggest was assuming the role of follower. In every style of dance I have done previously, I have only had to focus on myself and being in sync with the people around me. In ballroom dance, I had to surrender my movements and timing to the partner leading me.
Another attendee, Sabina Strashun, began taking classes with her fiancé to prepare for their first dance at their wedding. A former competitive dancer at the University of Western Ontario, Strashun said adjusting to following a leader was her biggest problem as well.
“I want to lead because I just get it fast, and I just want to do it,” Stashun said. “It is an adjustment to be a follower.”
We learned a new step, an under-the-arm turn, and practiced it a few more times before the class ended.
But we were just getting started. Once we got home, we turned on a Spotify “rumba mix” and danced around the living room, eager to show our roommates what we learned. The next day, we even put on a few YouTube tutorials for other styles like the cha cha, salsa and swing, recruiting some of our other roommates, Christina DiMaggio ’25 and Kascianna Corona ’25, to join us.
While my love for dance was something that got away from me during college, my ballroom dance experience makes me think it might be something I find my way back to post-grad. I need to keep practicing for the day when the iconic voiceover says the words, “Now dancing the rumba with her partner Val Chmerkovskiy, it’s Mia Messina.”
