Dancing with the Stars

If you went to the gym last weekend for a pickup game of basketball, or maybe mistakenly showed up for an intramural volleyball game, you might have been surprised to find hundreds of high heeled women in flashy makeup and men dressed to the nines, instead of a few sweaty students in gym shorts.

Why this dramatic change in scenery? The 18th Annual Harvard Ballroom Invitational, which converted the fourth floor of the Malkin Athletic Center into a sea of sequins and bright colors as dancers from all over the country took to the gymnasium floor.

According to Masha Maystrovskaya ’11, the Harvard team’s captain, the competition takes place over the span of two days, with around 700 competitors and probably more than 1000 spectators. “Our team has been doing really well competitively this year with the Tufts, BU, and Brown competitions, so I think we’re set up to do pretty well,” she said.

And pretty well they did. Chun Xue Patricia Hao ’09 came away with a win in the Gold Level Latin competition, happy to see her hard work pay off. “Since freshman year I’ve been running off in the middle of the night for five hour practices,” she said. “My friends all ask, ‘what are you doing with your time?’ Certainly not schoolwork. It’s great to have my friends here to see what I’m doing during my disappearances from the dorm.”

Hao’s partner, Adrian L. Sanborn ’11, rookie captain for the team, echoed Maystrovskaya’s sentiments. “They’ve been doing really well at past competitions and I’m looking forward to seeing them do well again,” he said.

These rookies might not be rookies for long, though. As Sorina Casian, a Harvard Business School student dancing with the team, said, “dancing is a virus—once you start you can’t stop.”