For my friends who aren't on Facebook--a recap of a happy event last month.

Yep, that's 1st place in the USDC Rising Star Smooth, B Division.  YAY!

Thanks, Rebel Yell, for a very nice write-up.

See here.  Shout-out to Sergei Shapoval and his professional partner, Ania Tarnowska.

Shameless and greedy request.

If you have time and the inclination, could you please click here and "like" this picture?  It's not the most flattering for us, but if we get the most "likes," then I get five free entries in this year's comp.  Many thanks!

My hobby.

Thanks to Sergei Shapoval (Sergei's Dance Studio), I get to do things like this:  

 

Shameless groveling for free dance competition entries.

The folks who own the Vegas Open Dance Challenge are having a photo contest, and the pic with the most likes on it gets some free entries.

So I'm shamelessly asking all of my friends (and their friends) to please click on this link here and "like" my picture.  Thanks so much!

See? I'm not the only one with a double life.

Here.  But how does she find dresses for $1,800? 

Customer service warning for ballroom dancers: AVOID "www.dancerschoiceonline.com"

I ordered three pairs of shoes in mid-November.  On 11/18, the company informed me that one of the three pairs was out of stock, and that my refund would be "coming."  It's 12/4.  No refund yet.

One pair of shoes didn't fit.  It took six emails -- SIX -- to find out that returns went to the shoe manufacturer, not to Dancers' Choice.

The email response is spotty, painfully slow, and woefully incomplete.

No matter the temptation, stay away from this company.  It's got some of the worst customer service I've seen in a long time.

A fresh take on voting on Dancing With The Stars

I love DWTS, and I always have.  (I was able to go to a semi-final one year, thanks to my buddy Arnold Peter, who represents BBC America, among other clients).  And thanks to my buddy Jack Ayer, I can forward to you this NYT essay on how the voting really works (see here). 

Isn't it nice to understand arithmetic sometimes?

Which Weapon of Choice video is better?

This new Kia commercial (see here) is great, but then, so's Fatboy Slim's original music video with Christopher Walken (see here).  (Yes, I know--one link has some delays, but trust me, both links are worth watching.)

For me, the win goes to Christopher Walken, who's an all-around amazing performer.  Jeff disagrees.

I've posted some videos of our 2010 Vegas Showdown competition.

You can see them on the right-hand side of the blog--Sergei & I had a ton of fun!

Thanks, Super Shag, for the videos!

SuperShag did some on-the-dance-floor videos of our Vegas Showdown 2010 Silver Smooth Scholarship (here), Bronze Standard Scholarship (here), and Open B Rhythm Scholarship rounds.  (The two in the ballgowns are tango, which is why I look more serious in those clips.)  For the Rhythm videos, see here (although I managed to kick the floor in a rondé), here, and here.  (Thank goodness that SuperShag didn't catch the Coppertone moment after that part of our routine!)  For more tiny videos, check this blog after this weekend.

Thanks to my teacher, Sergei Shapoval, and to my coaches, Felipe and Carolina Telona.  Y'all ROCK!

New ballroom dress designer in town!

My buddies Cindy & Kimberly have opened Fiore Ballroom Designs (here), and I really love their work--AND I'm proud of them for launching this new biz!

The future of ballroom dance

Watch Martin Rivas dance quickstep (with Sergei Shapoval and Liza Smith) at this year's Nevada Star Ball): here. BRAVO, Martin!

A shout-out to my dance teacher, Sergei Shapoval

Sergei's blog (here) was nice enough to give me a shout-out (here), and I wanted to return the favor. Thanks, Sergei!

And now for something completely different (ballroom dancing) ...

Some of you know that I took up ballroom and Latin dancing a few years ago, as a way of working out the stress of my then-job as dean. This weekend, as I was typing away on emails, ABC's weekend edition of Good Morning America (the link's at http://abcnews.go.com/Video/playerIndex?id=2776515, but when you click to it, you can't get back to this page, so you might want to open it in a new window) showed the dance studio that I attend in Houston, King's Dancing Center. (When I head out to Las Vegas, I'll also dance at SuperShag Vegas.)

I picked up ballroom dancing first in the Bay Area, fell in love with it there, and started competing seriously out of Sam Sodano's studio in Columbus, Ohio, when I started teaching at Ohio State. When I became an associate dean at OSU, I gave it up due to lack of time. Nine years later, I started from scratch here in Houston. If you've watched TLC's Ballroom Bootcamp, you've probably seen my teacher, Billy King, on TV.

So why dance? First off, it really is a way of reducing stress. When I was having a bad day at work, I could leave the stress behind for a bit while I was taking lessons. When I was frustrated at my dancing, I could take some comfort in the fact that I was enjoying my work. When neither part of my life was going well, I came home and savored my family (cats included) and friends.

Second, dancing gives me an outlet for my love of performing. It's one of the few ways to play "dress-up" as an adult, and it's great exercise. It's not inexpensive, and that's one of the many reasons I consult--to pay for my dancing habit.

Finally, I have a whole set of friends from dancing that I'd likely never have met outside of dancing. Amateur ballroom dancers (which is what I am) are generally friendly, not competitive in the mean sense, happy to encourage others, and interesting. Most of the pro teachers and coaches that I've met have been wonderful to me, and I'm learning a great deal from them. It takes a lot of intelligence to dance well (and more coordination than I have at times).

I visited with a friend recently who works so hard that there's no time for hobbies. I felt the same way for a while, but I learned that I need my hobbies to keep that part of my personality alive. So for me, thank goodness for dancing!