Time off

Ballroom dancer

Authors: Noor Kafil-Hussain 

Publication date:  26 Feb 2008

I used to refuse to dance. I was the only lad in the family, and my mother and her seven sisters all danced. They tried to persuade me to get involved, but I was having none of it. In my fifth year at Liverpool University, when I was 25, I decided to trot along to the university dance course; I thought I might as well try it. My aunts had all passed away by then, and would have loved to see me do it. I met my wife, Tricia, at dance lessons, and we’ve been dancing together ever since. We started entering small local competitions, and went on to compete in leagues. Over the years we’ve definitely improved. We made the semi-finals and finals of the British National Dance competition a few times, and finally came first last year; we’re the current Senior British Champions in Ballroom Dancing.

We stick to the standard dances when competing; the waltz, Viennese waltz, tango, foxtrot, and quickstep. We used to do the Latin American dances as well, but we want to keep the standard as high as possible with our current five dances; more on top of that is a lot of work. Fitness is important; competitions often have many rounds, which can take a few hours. There’s the physical training side, the technique side, and then there’s the practising. You have to practise a lot to master the choreography. We try to pick steps that suit us; it depends on the couple, you choose the moves that you’re both good at. We always try to produce our best performance, but it’s not very often that we come off the dance floor completely satisfied with what we’ve done. There’s always something that could have been done better; that happens all the time. That’s the addictive side of it—it’s difficult to do a perfect performance, if not impossible. The worst time to practise is when we’re both tired. The balance and coordination is gone, and that’s when we get nice arguments developing. But it has improved our relationship over the long term.

It’s important to have something that takes you away from work, especially considering the upset in the NHS at the moment. The great thing about dancing is that you can be creative; it’s a different life to medicine. We’ve made and kept plenty of friends over the years through dancing. We’ve also travelled abroad to dance, representing England in European and World championships. It’s interesting to see how other countries put on competitions; a different experience.

We recently did a sponsored dance in our hospital coffee area. Believe it or not, people paid £1 to dance with me and to enter a raffle. We raised £2000 for our care of the elderly ward. We’d like to defend our current title this November. Hopefully we’ll be lucky enough and good enough to win it again. In a perfect world, I would like to be in the top six couples in the senior grade of ballroom dancing in the world. The highest we’ve been is in the top 24, but never the top six. I’d love to do that before I retire. That’s our aim.

Noor Kafil-Hussain third year medical student St George’s, London

 noor85@hotmail.com