Slow-slow-quick-quick. When most of us are daydreaming about the steps we’ll take toward lunch, BioE senior David Shis is going over the steps to his fox-trot.

“Dancing is a really fun release and a good break from academics,” he says. “I just like to move.”

The 21-year-old, who graduates in May, is a member of the UC Berkeley Ballroom Dancers team. He joined the club, founded in 1957, as a freshman after taking a free Latin dance lesson they offered. On April 26, he’ll compete with the team for the last time, at the Cardinal Classic, hosted at Stanford.

There, Shis and his partner, L&S senior Stephanie Yang, will do what they do best: dance. The duo competes in the Top Tier, or championship level; they will perform 10 dances in all, five “standards”—waltz, tango, Viennese waltz, fox-trot and quickstep—and five “Latin” dances—cha-cha, samba, rumba, paso doble and jive. They consistently place in the top three.

“It’s a fitting ending,” Shis says. “I started out as a beginner and I never imagined I’d be dancing at this level. Now I’m even teaching an intermediate class. I guess after putting in 18 hours per week I’d better be somewhere.”

That’s right, 18 hours per week. Basically a part-time job. Not to mention at least three competitions each semester, including the USA DanceSport National Champion-ships, and social outings with the team. But juggling school and dance hasn’t been as easy as 1-2-3.

“It’s been really challenging keeping up with schoolwork and dance,” says Shis, who’s from Irvine. “But I’d strongly recommend it. I found something to let loose and have fun in a good, social, physical way. The team was like another family.”

Shis even says his engineer’s mind helps him with his moves. “Ballroom dancing is actually very analytic. You have to memorize steps. There’s a lot of thinking, self-discovery and refinement. Engineering is also a constant drive to perfection.”

So, will our very own Fred (or should I say Bear) Astaire hang up his shoes once he graduates? Not. Shis plans to stay in the Bay Area, look for a biotech job and pursue as many social ballroom opportunities as possible. He may even try to find a studio and, the hardest task of all, a partner. Most advanced dancers already have one.

For now, he’s focused on the upcoming competition, and on one move in particular: the pesky fall-away slip pivot. “Whenever we get to the pivot part, we have trouble getting around each other and moving out of it in a balanced way,” Shis says. “And our coaches are always telling us we need to sway more.”

The 70-member strong, student-run Berkeley Ballroom Dancers group provides classes, practices and events for dancers of all levels.

http://ucbd.org/

—By Megan Mansell Williams