Colleagues and the international neuroscience community know Joy Hirsch, PhD, for her groundbreaking research work, but she recently garnered awards for her other passion: competitive ballroom dance.
Hirsch, the Elizabeth Mears and House Jameson Professor of Psychiatry and professor of comparative medicine and of neuroscience at Yale School of Medicine, and her long-time dance partner, Richard Diaz, won national championships in both the classical ballroom and Latin categories at the National Dance Council of America Empire Dance Championships in Jersey City, N.J., Aug. 2-3.
Hirsch and Diaz usually compete in regional and state championship competitions, but the August event in New Jersey was an opportunity to dance in a national multi-dance competition. The competition for the ballroom dances includes the classical dances i.e. waltz, foxtrot, tango, quick step, and Viennese waltz, while the Latin competition dances include the cha-cha, samba, rumba, jive (fast swing), and paso doble.
Hirsch has been a competitive ballroom dancer since she was in graduate school. “At that time, I had to make a decision regarding whether I was going to be a professional dancer or an academic,” she said. “Dance has always been my life passion, and this was not an easy decision for me. Nonetheless, I decided that dance would be my avocation and that was the beginning of my training as a ballroom dancer.”
Hirsch has remained an amateur while Diaz, her partner, is a professional, so they compete as a pro-am team. They train together three to six hours a week with additional coaching before competitions. Prior to the recent competition Hirsch added to her training program by climbing nine flights of stairs every day to her office and laboratory on the 9th floor of the 300 George St. building in New Haven.
She said the extra conditioning gave her an advantage in the national contest, where the competition was intense. Hirsch and Diaz dance "international style,” gold levels, with strict syllabus requirements for each dance, so the training is rigorous. The pair dances in about three major competitions a year.
Hirsch has taken a few short breaks from dancing related to life events associated with family and intense periods of work, however she has no plans to curtail her training and competition schedule and continues to take the stairs every day to her laboratory.