Firstly, to answer your inevitable question: Dancesport is the competitive aspect of Ballroom and Latin dancing.  The Cambridge University Dancesport Team (CUDT) is a university sports team that represents Cambridge at all major inter-university Dancesport competitions.  The Latin dances include the Cha Cha Cha, the Samba, the Rumba, the Paso Doble and the Jive with a ballroom section including the Waltz, the Fox Trot, the Tango, the Viennese Waltz and the Quickstep. As a team, we have now been undefeated for two years and have won the Inter-University Dancesport National Championships, the Regional Championships, as well as the annual Varsity match.  In fact, we have won six out of the last eight Inter-University National Championships and five out of the last seven Varsity matches.  But what is the reason behind the success story?

There are several, but none should come as a major surprise. Hours and hours of dedicated, focused, exhaustive practice, excellent coaching, a strong team spirit, effective cooperation and healthy competition (mostly from our Oxford counterparts) have brought the team to where we are today.  Most of us live an exciting but stressful existence, constantly juggling our academic and Dancesport commitments in an attempt to strike that elusive ‘healthy’ balance.

CUDT consists of the Blues team which includes twenty couples that represent the university at major competitions, a Squad of roughly ten couples and a beginners team of roughly ten to twenty couples, open to anyone who has never received professional Dancesport coaching prior to that academic year.  The twenty Blues team couples are selected during ‘team trials’, a competitive audition during Michaelmas term, from around two hundred dancers. 

The Blues team trains for a minimum of twelve hours a week. However, most dancers will practice a lot more than this, and many of us train two or three hours a day.  Striking a healthy work-dancing-life balance is therefore more than complicated, but history has shown that academic competitiveness and a passion for competitive dancing are by no means incompatible.

We are well known not only for our hard work and success on the university Dancesport circuit, but also for our unique team spirit and culture of sportsmanship.  In recent years, the team has seen several advanced dancers compromising their own competitive performance for the team’s overall success.  For example, we have seen advanced dancers willing to dance with talented beginners in order to help create the strongest combination of dance partnerships for that competitive year, even if this meant that their own results might temporarily get worse. We have coaches who will sacrifice their free time to, for instance, attend team practices they are not required to before competitions to give dancers that last piece of advice which could make the difference between winning or losing.  It is all very much a team effort!

A highlight from our Varsity success this year in Cambridge was the incredible performance of Cambridge couple Kit Davies and Shin Bin Lim, who won the trophies for Best Varsity Latin Couple and Best Overall Varsity Couple. They also won three Cambridge-specific awards including the highly prised Coaches’ Choice trophy which is awarded to the couple who show the most dedication and commitment to the team throughout the year, indicating that team spirit and competitive success really do go hand in hand. Kit and Shin are also reigning National Champions in Inter-University Intermediate Latin.

CUDT is a perfect example of a team that achieves a lot without simply recruiting talented individuals or dancers who are already at a high standard.  We excel at what we do because of the hard work that team members – dancers and coaches alike – put in over the years and through working together towards a common goal.  And this, I believe, is the definition of a true team!