Ballroom’s Better Together
By Prita Narayan
A shout from the corner of the room immediately draws a smile from my long-exhausted face. “Go Tim and Prita!” I hear a voice call from across the room. A sea of cheers and yells follows, as my new teammates support my partner and I in our final dance of the day: Bronze American Foxtrot. Those uplifting voices were precisely what I needed to get my energy up after a long day of competing at Ballroom Blast.
I am definitely no newcomer to the world of ballroom dance, especially not competitive ballroom dance. I’ve been studying with various professionals and under my parents’ guidance for over ten years, and I have been competing for the past three. Because I come from a town where ballroom dancing isn’t very common amongst youth, I’ve been competing primarily with my dad in the Amateur Adult division since I was 15 years old, simply because it’s the only category my dad and I are eligible to compete in together. I was in no way unprepared to take on other collegiate competitors when I joined the UMN Twin Cities Ballroom Team, having been competing with them at past competitions. I was, however, pleasantly surprised at the environment and relationships fostered amongst the members of the ballroom team.
Having only travelled and competed with my parents as my coaches, fellow teammates, and cheering squad, I wasn’t used to this idea of being a part of a team of around 40 people. It was extremely overwhelming to me, and because I’d been trained to take dance so seriously, I was intimidated by my upperclassmen, who I assumed would all be better, more experienced, and more advanced than I was. However, upon attending practice after practice, and spending a good portion of my week with these people, I was able to see a different side of competitive dance, one that was hidden from me for most of my experience in the competitive ballroom world. As the members of the team opened up to me, I began to find myself having more fun with dancing, and worrying less about my training, experience and how well I compare to my teammates, but instead focusing on improving my dancing and having more fun while doing so.
Finally, after weeks and weeks of exhausting practices, Blast rolled around. I was absolutely stoked to finally be thrust into a setting I was familiar with: the busy dressing rooms with girls getting their hair and makeup done before their first heat, guys out in the hallways practicing on their own as they wait for their partners to finish getting dressed, and dancers getting their packets at the registration desk up front. My first heats were some of the earliest, so I was one of the first dancers on my team to arrive at blast. I was pretty much on my own in the dressing room, something I was used to. I went out, got warmed up for my first heat, practiced a bit with my partner, and got ready to go out. By this time, more of my teammates had arrived at the competition and had finished getting registered. I was on deck, about to go on the floor, when I saw my team captain waving a big maroon foam finger and shouting my name. Immediately, I felt ready to perform. A sense of pride for my school and my team rushed through me, and I was more than ready to take on the other couples on the floor and do my best to represent my team and my fellow dancers.
The idea of competing as a team of individuals isn’t found in many other sports, and I am fortunate to have found an environment that cultivates this idea. Yes, when my team and I are competing together, many of us are competing against each other in various heats. However, our competitions are more than just our own personal results. When we compete, we compete as a collective unit to see just how far up we can go, and how well our strongest team members can go. We support those who we compete against, because as a team, we care more about our collective results as an entire unit than the individual results.