It is almost accidental that Brian is an accomplished Bronze-level dancer today. Seven years ago, he was barely aware of this beautiful art form. His dreams then are not his dreams today. Dancesport has taken a place in the core of his personal and professional life, which means it is at the core of his hopes and dreams.
1. Introduction
After 34 years working in one of America’s largest corporations, Brian dreamed of having a calm, quiet retirement for himself and his wife, Natalie. But just before he retired, that dream took a sharp turn after they stepped into a suburban Chicago FADS studio: not only would his retirement be full of competitive ballroom dancing, but he also would go back to work as an owner of a ballroom dance studio!
Seven years ago (2016), ballroom dancing was not even on Brian’s radar. His daughter’s wedding was a task at hand, where he was expected to execute a reasonable father-daughter dance. Their effort was a widely applauded Rumba box with underarm turns, four minutes of “quick-quick-slow” to Heart’s “Dog and Butterfly.”
2. FADS
At FADS, Brian and Natalie started with Rumba and Hustle. Six months later, they had added several Smooth and Rhythm routines, competing in their first Illinois regional competition. This also was Brian’s first pro/am competition, paired with Anne Askjær, their first teacher. Brian and Natalie won an amateur Smooth title at the FADS World Championships in Las Vegas a year later.
3. Just Dancing
In 2018, Brian and Natalie returned to their long-time home in St. Louis and joined Just Dancing, their new studio nearby. They purchased the latter after a few months of overlap learning at both the Chicago studio and Just Dancing.
Brian and his new instructor, Agnieszka Strojek, danced together for almost four years, notching a championship win at USDC 2021. They were Dancers Cup Tour’s top bronze male student and top female teacher in both 2019 and 2021. Also, they represented the Dancers Cup Tour in the BoB finale at OSB 2019. They won 15 contested multi-dance championships at NDCA-sanctioned dancesport competitions throughout their partnership.
4. More with Just Dancing
Danyelle Morley has been his pro partner since the Spring of 2022. Their accomplishments include championship wins at USDC 2022 and 2023, five championship wins at the inaugural Dance Vision National Championships in 2022, a championship win at OSB 2022, MIB Tour Grand Champions in 2023, and representing DBDC Boston in the BoB finale at OSB 2023. In the World Pro/Am Dancesport Series, Brian has been in the Top 10 male students for five consecutive years. They have placed 1st in 24 contested multi-dance championships at NDCA-sanctioned dancesport competitions.
He and Natalie continue to dance am/am, competing primarily in club dances. In 2021, they were Dancers Cup Tour’s top male and top female students.
Brian is now an experienced Bronze-level dancer in Smooth, Rhythm, and some Nightclub styles. An extremely eager student, a studio owner committed to his teaching staff and clients, and a serious but friendly gentleman competitor on the floor, Brian is a guy with big dance dreams!
5. Discussion
“Ballroom dancing is awesome,” exclaims Brian!
Since he retired from corporate America, he credits it with a complete renewal of his body, mind, and spirit. Five main reasons:
- Dancing is beautiful.
- Dancing makes him think in new ways.
- Dancing stimulates creativity.
- Dancing is for everyone.
- Dancing is “right here, right now”
To briefly highlight each …
5.1 Reason #1: Dancing is beautiful
“Making our way through this life sometimes can be hard,” Brian said. “There are times when the world around us is ugly. Dancing, though, is beautiful. I can make something beautiful. When I dance, the world is a little more beautiful because of me. All it takes is a little communication, connection, and chemistry with someone who is like-minded about valuing beauty.”
“One of the aspects of dancing that is so beautiful is that as a live art form, it is here for a moment and then gone. It is like a sunrise or sunset. Sure, we have videos and photos, but the creative act – the dance itself – is transitory. So, appreciating and savoring its beauty at the moment is worthwhile: in the 60 seconds a competitive heat takes, or the 2:30 for a showcase performance, or dancing socially for a few moments with each partner.”
5.2 Reason #2: Dancing makes him think in new ways
Brian states, “Ballroom dancing integrates so much that I need to be physically, mentally, and emotionally healthy. Lifelong learning: It is fun to think of all the sparks going off up there in my brain.”
Brian dances 19 different Closed and Open routines in Rhythm, Smooth, and Nightclub, with a pro partner and an amateur partner, plus two or more showcases per year. He trains two or three hours a day, every day. “Every time I am on the practice or competition floor, it is an adventure in choreography, technique, connection, musicality, stamina, partnership – you name it,” Brian said. “I must think differently, or I would be toast. My brain loves to organize by systems, deconstructing then reconstructing their parts, experimenting with solutions, sharing those with my partner and integrating her creativity, then getting my body to cooperate with all of that.”
5.3 Reason #3: Dancing stimulates creativity
Brian states, “I am a creative person: a musician, a writer, an artist. There is something so unique about a work of art whose canvas is a dance floor, whose brush is a syllabus. Creating in this medium – in tandem with another human being – is utterly rewarding. To lock eyes with someone and fill the volume of a heartbeat with something so important and valuable because it is fleeting.”
Brian continues, “As a work of art, dancing is here, then it is gone with (hopefully!) a pleasant memory. Being invited into a partnership at the onset of each heat, then creating our artwork together with synchronization is super-satisfying.”
5.4 Reason #4: Dancing is for everyone
“It is a unique duality of community – Where everyone is stoked about learning, doing, and advancing the artform with everyone else – and competition – athletic, rigorous, exhilarating. And the community is welcoming. We make lifelong connections with people who want us in their lives. When I open the heat list on the competition’s website and see my competitors’ names, I am genuinely eager to see them. It does not soften me as a competitor. The dancing I am going to engage in when I lead my partner onto the floor will be serious, and I will give it everything I have. But I also respect my competitors with a warmth that is hard to put into words exactly. I think it is that I just know they are in it with me – they are happy when I do well, as I am when they excel. Hitting the MIB circuit hard for a year yielded several rewarding relationships with gentleman competitors and their professional ‘followers.’ We are all very competitive, yet everyone knows that we are really competing primarily with ourselves: Have I improved since last time?”
5.5 Reason #5: Dancing is “right here, right now”
Someone has said that competitive ballroom dancing demands total focus. “I am sure there are other similar pastimes,” Brian said. Racing in Formula 1, maybe. Or cliff-diving in Acapulco. Doing that kind of sky-gliding where your suit is your ‘chute, and you slip through the air like a human flying squirrel over the landscape.
“But for me, ballroom dancing is all of them and more things like them. In dancing, everything is sensed rather than experienced logically. It is like a wonderful dream that unfolds all by itself. Yet, there is a lucidity to it in expressing what I am sensing – letting what is inside come out to play. I’m aware of that and, of course, of my partner. To say the least, dancing filters out distractions. Which lets us create something beautiful together on the dance floor (see Reason #1).”
6. More discussion
“What else is awesome about ballroom dancing?” You may ask …
Brian says one of the big surprises about ballroom dancing is how much he enjoys dressing up. His (incomplete) list of fun costumes: an insane Harlequinnish jester, a conspiracy theorist (complete with tinfoil hat), a wicked warlock lord, Clint Eastwood in “The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly,” a werewolf, a sailor, a 17th Century earl, and rock concert T-shirts a-plenty.
“Danyelle and I even sported matching Blue Öyster Cult shirts for a recent club night,” he recalled. “But every Saturday evening at the competitions, I will never fail to arrive in a black tuxedo with my father’s cufflinks. That is just how it is supposed to be done.”
If “practice makes perfect” is true, Brian is the first to admit that he should practice more. But he trains a lot already. With coaching, lessons, study, and practice, he is on the floor for three to five hours every weekday. Floor time at Just Dancing is free to every student there. It is a good thing!
“Ballroom dancing is one of the hardest things I have ever attempted,” Brian said. “There are no shortcuts. There is no way to outsmart it. I must immerse myself, and that is 100% fine with me. Because when it goes right and that feeling of accomplishment calls, it is completely rewarding physically, mentally, and emotionally.”
One of Brian’s favorite parts of learning dancesport is deep technique.
“My brain is wired to think in systems, deconstructing and reconstructing bits and pieces of systems to better understand them. So, while some students ‘just wanna dance’ – and that is totally cool – I prefer to go deep. Technique is my happy place. I am fortunate in that one of Danyelle’s many teaching talents is bringing those details to life. She is exceptionally gifted at helping me understand what is happening or should happen. And our studio hosts two or more visiting coaches a month, which is another asset for a guy like me who really wants to drill into all of it.”
7. Running the studio
One of the world’s top dancesport studios is inside a nondescript building in St. Louis’s western suburbs. With a giant primary ballroom, four additional learning spaces, a teacher’s lounge, and office space, Just Dancing totals 8,000 square feet. Brian and Natalie purchased the now 36-year-old business in 2019, then remodeled and rebranded it. They are now adding Pilates equipment for a spin-off business that serves dancers.
“We are not bashful about our school,” Brian said. “In fact, we are very pleased with what we are accomplishing there. It is the longest-running dance studio business in St. Louis. Our five employee teachers and 11 independent instructors collectively have hundreds of years of teaching experience. We bring the elite of dancesport coaches from across America every month to put extra eyes on our students’ progress.”
Bottom line: Brian says, “Our programs are bringing the art and sport of dancing to more new people every week!”
When Brian and Natalie acquired the business, they adopted five guiding principles, with plans and programs supporting each of them:
- Teachers: Teacher-friendly policies/practices that allow us to field the best staff.
- Students: Effective, efficient curriculum meeting students’ goals.
- Facility: A superb, clean, safe studio with a high-end dance floor and learning tools.
- Community: Solidarity with other studios as artists; friendly competition with them as athletes.
- Business: Ethically run, well-governed, growing business, a good neighbor to all.
“I thought I was going to retire and dance every waking hour to the end of my days,” Brian joked. “Lots of people thought we were nuts when we bought Just Dancing. ‘You bought a what?’ they teased. And it is a lot of work. Good thing it is a labor of love!”
Just Dancing’s motto is “You look great on the dance floor.” The studio is packed most evenings, with multiple group classes four nights a week, crowded twice-monthly social dances, special showcases, team matches, and an annual student exhibition.
Over the past five years, the studio has earned a dozen top-studio awards at competitions across the country. Furthermore, the World Pro/Am Dancesport Series has ranked Just Dancing every year in its top 1% of 3,500 participating studios around the world. Its students have won over a dozen U.S. titles, and it fields two sponsored professional couples whose accomplishments grow every month.
Brian handles the marketing and facility-related stuff, while Natalie handles the financial and personnel side. Whatever is left, they approach as a team. One of those team subjects is philanthropic work, and both are “Dance for the Cure” Ambassadors with the charitable organization targeting cancer research founded by dancesport champion and adjudicator Irina Sarukhanyan.
“When I learned that both Irina and I lost a parent to cancer, it was a no-brainer for us to get involved and make this our primary philanthropic focus,” Brian said.
“This is work we are very excited about. And it matches the energy we feel every time we walk through the front door and engage in anything going on at our studio. What we had hoped for when we bought the business was to develop a school with a strong sense of community amongst its dancers. And that is exactly what is happening.”
www.facebook.com/justdancingstudiostloui
www.facebook.com/ballroommarriage.
8. From today to tomorrow
By the end of 2023, Brian had danced his 53rd dancesport competition in just under six years. More than 35,000 miles on airplanes had taken him and his dance partners to 20 major U.S. cities in 15 states. He had even danced atop Pike’s Peak, next to the pier at Venice Beach, on Disneyland’s Main Street U.S.A., and alongside the U.S.S. Constitution, “Old Ironsides,” moored in Boston’s Inner Harbor.
Now, what is next for him and his dance partners? Perhaps he will earn a spot on NDCA’s Premier National Rankings someday. Or dance at a competition outside the U.S., maybe even at Blackpool. He will move to Silver and take those Dance Vision medal tests after a while. More competitions, showcases, formations, group classes, elite coaching, dance camps… with the goal to simply improve each week, first and foremost in competition with himself – the dancer he was yesterday.
Also, as they travel to competitions across the country, he and Danyelle are searching for the Best Reuben Sandwich in America. There is no hurry to find it; Sam LaGrassa’s in Boston’s Province Street has the best so far.
9. Conclusion
Brian concludes with many, many thanks to everybody … “To Natalie. To my teachers Anne, Aga, and Dany. And to Steve Brockman, Martin Cawston, John DePalma, Senzo Makhaye, Kimberley Mitchell, Marianne Nichole, Mariusz Olszewski, Irina Sarukhanyan, Benji Schwimmer, Rebecca Walthall, and Maysen Wilder. For all your generosity and kindness, I am indebted.”
