I am so excited to welcome Sabrina Strasser to the blog! She is an Open Latin pro-am competitive ballroom dancer, mother of two, and owner of SabiChic, a dancewear accessories brand. Of course, you may know her better from the show Dancing Queens, which recently wrapped its first season on Bravo. I sat down with Sabrina to talk about competing in ballroom, managing mindset and that tricky life-dance balance, and her experiences on Dancing Queens.

Those First Dance Steps

Sabrina was first inspired to try ballroom dancing after watching Dancing with the Stars. She started out slowly, dancing just one day a week, but quickly grew as a dancer. I was interested to learn that she had three teachers before partnering with her current teacher, Stanislav Kochergin (Stas for short). I wondered how this affected her growth as a dancer because I could see the value in getting a variety of perspectives and approaches along your dance journey, but I could also see the challenge in having to get to know new dance partners.

Sabrina felt her past teachers did the right thing in encouraging her to move on to someone else. Her first teacher did not compete and was more like someone who provided an introduction to ballroom dance. She credits her second teacher with helping her to realize her deep passion for dance through the details of dance that he taught her. When her second teacher moved out of the area, he referred her to another teacher who competed as a professional as well as with students. Sabrina stayed with this third teacher for four years and began her competitive dance journey with him. Sabrina’s reaction to competition? “I just became obsessed.” 

Her transition to Stas, her current pro partner, came about because she was competing but not making the finals.

“I wasn’t making the final, and it would frustrate me. I would go to my room and cry every night that we would compete…I would so long to be in the final. I would envision myself in the Ohio final or whatever it may be.”

When she connected with Stas, it turned out that he already knew who she was from seeing her dance at competitions. So even if she wasn’t making the finals, she was making an impression!

The Pro-Am Partnership

Sabrina’s been dancing with Stas for 12 years. While they did take a break for about a year and a half, that’s still a long time for a pro-am partnership! I asked Sabrina how the partnership has evolved over the years, for better or worse. She recognized that other people balk at how she and Stas speak to each other because it is true that they do fight a lot. Part of the reason is because they have become so familiar with each other through the years. They’re not just dance partners; they’re practically family. Stas and his wife will come to Sabrina’s family’s Shabbat dinners and even attend special events like her daughter’s bat mitzvah. That was why Sabrina decided to work with a different pro – she felt she needed someone she was less comfortable with, whom she could view solely as her coach and the professional dancer in the partnership. 

It seems they were meant to come together again however, as when the opportunity to be on Dancing Queens appeared, Sabrina’s other pro partner was not interested in doing the show and Sabrina ended up reaching out to Stas again. While Sabrina acknowledges that she and Stas probably take each other for granted a little too often, she also values the deep level of understanding that exists between them and only comes from a long-term partnership.

Training Like a Champion

Sabrina and Stas dance together for 1.5 hours, three to four times a week, and they add rounds when they have a competition coming up. In addition, Sabrina is learning Smooth with another teacher about once a week. So her minimum dance schedule is four double lessons a week, and to quote Sabrina, “I’m tired!” 

Just before the pandemic, I was taking lessons with my teacher twice a week, going to the studio for solo practice once a week, and meeting up with my new amateur partner at least once a week. Four days may not seem like a lot for a dancer who is training for their career, but for an adult dance student who also has a home, a job, a business, and/or family to take care of in addition to their dancing, it’s a lot! I’m not surprised at all that Sabrina is tired. I was too!

As pro-am dancers, we do most of our preparation for competition in the studio, but there is also preparation to be done at the competition. I developed a specific routine for when I arrived at competitions to help me manage my anxiety as I entered the ballroom and get into a solid mindset before dancing. I asked Sabrina if she had any tools or habits to help her mentally prepare at a competition.

“When I enter the ballroom, I have a little talk to myself against the wall…one of my coaches always said ‘when you go there, you have to pretend you’re the best, so talk to yourself. Say I’m the best, I’m amazing, I’m here to do well, I’m here to win.’ I close my eyes and self-talk. And it kinda lifts me up!”

A Dancer’s Mindset

Sabrina recently competed at Manhattan Dancesport and, in her words, it was a disaster. First, she was under a strict timeline to dance and then return home in time to see her girls before they left for camp. So when the competition started running late, her stress grew exponentially. She ended up having to run out of the ballroom right after awards to catch an Uber to the airport. She didn’t even have time to change out of her competition dress!

She was also testing new routines for the first time. I learned that Sabrina and Stas hadn’t competed since Millennium last year, which was featured on the finale of Dancing Queens. So it was their first time back on the floor with new routines to boot. Manhattan is a larger competition, so it was the equivalent of diving back in via the deep end.

The other factor was the fame gained from being on a popular reality show.

“We had people coming up to us the whole day. People who were coming especially to watch us dance because of the show. They weren’t dancers, they were just fans of Dancing Queens.”

While she was happy to meet fans and take pictures with them, she also felt overwhelmed and distracted by the extra attention. As a result, she didn’t feel fully in her zone to perform her best. 

I asked Sabrina how she recovers from those days because we all have them! The pro-am journey is not easy, especially if you’re competing at a high level and especially if you’ve been winning as much as Sabrina has. The expectations and pressure to perform near-perfectly all of the time build to unmanageable levels.

The first step to recovery for Sabrina? She cries. 

She shared that after Manhattan, she cried on the plane ride home and stayed in bed for a day before she felt ready to get up and move forward. Some may think she’s overreacting because for many people, dance falls squarely in the hobby category, even for some competitive pro-am dancers. But for someone like Sabrina, who feels so deeply passionate about dance, the disappointments are also felt deeply. In addition, because of Dancing Queens, she had more people than usual at the competition there to see her dance, and she felt like she let everyone down (even though I’m sure everyone there loved seeing her dance regardless of her results!).

“In my mind, I let everybody down. You came to support me and I appreciate that, and I really wanted to live up to your expectations. And I really didn’t.”

So why not let the feelings flow and have a good cry?

For my introverted self, I always needed a day or two after a competition to be alone in order to recover from being around so many people and the sensory overload delivered by the competition environment. It’s important to know that recovery from a performance isn’t just about the physical. When we put so much of ourselves into our art/sport, we also need to incorporate mental and emotional recovery.

As much as Sabrina wanted to live up to everyone’s expectations of her at Manhattan, she was also able to chalk it up to just an “off” day for her. Dancers are humans; therefore, we can’t be perfect or even great all of the time. Even elite athletes have off days! Some days, you’re just not there and you need to give yourself time to recover, even if that means letting yourself stay in bed and have a good cry. Sabrina also looked at it as a good lesson for her daughters that it’s ok to have those off days.

The Joy of Dance

I loved the scene in Dancing Queens when Sabrina and her daughter Chloe were chatting and Chloe quite bluntly tells her mom that if she isn’t having fun with dance, then there’s no point. It spoke to the truth that joy is at the root of why we dance and why we pursue intense journeys like pro-am competitions when dance is not our profession. Sabrina and I chatted about how she stays connected to her joy of dance and what she does when she realizes that connection has been lost.

Sabrina’s recent experience at Manhattan was eye-opening for her because even as she was dancing, she realized she didn’t want to be there. She wanted to be home with her kids instead. She said she had tried to force herself to be everything at once and that was the wrong decision. Trying to show up as a competitive dancer for the first time in a year while also being available to her Dancing Queens fans while also trying to make it home to see her girls early the next morning was too much, and the pressure stripped away the joy of the experience.

For her, preserving her joy of dancing means being mindful of the timing of her competitions so that they don’t take away from special times that she doesn’t want to miss with her family. She loves dance, and at the same time, after Manhattan, she now knows that she feels truly happy dancing when she also knows that her family is taken care of and she isn’t missing moments that are important to her as a mom. 

She also loves that ballroom is a sport that allows people of any age to compete, which brought up another way she connects with her joy – through watching others experience their joy. She shared that she watched a man in his 80s competing and it brought her so much joy just to watch him smiling on the dance floor. She finds it a wonderful thing that ballroom allows someone at that age to still challenge themselves in a competitive environment. I have to agree! I think it’s wonderful that it’s possible for someone to start dancing at age 50, 60, 70 or even older and discover a passion that not only brings them joy but also personal fulfillment and accomplishment. 

Dancing Queens

After following Sabrina on Dancing Queens, I was so curious to hear about her experiences filming the show. I learned that this wasn’t her first time in front of the camera. Sabrina has worked in broadcast journalism and acted in several commercials and small bit roles on television shows in the past. She was excited at the opportunity to be on Dancing Queens. Being on television has always been an ambition of hers and for this project to also include her dance passion was a dream come true. Sabrina said the experience was amazing and she wouldn’t change a thing.

Through Dancing Queens, Sabrina wanted people to see how beautiful ballroom dance was and hoped to inspire people to try it out for themselves. She shared that she did have a lot of people reach out to her asking how they can get started! On a more personal level, she hoped it would help her business SabiChic grow and also be a chance for her to showcase herself.

Having previous experience in front of the camera gave Sabrina an edge on the show, but at the same time, she shared that it was difficult to get used to the cameras following her around everywhere. Every moment of your life is taped and so it’s especially challenging when you just want some quiet time without anyone in your space. As the crew was gathering footage for the show, they wanted to capture everything, so even taking a sip of water triggered a convergence of multiple cameras! 

She appreciated the work that the show put in to capture the essence of ballroom, but at the same time, it did make it more difficult for her as the dancer to perform well. I commented that at Millennium, she seemed to be in her zone, and she said by that time, she had gotten more comfortable with the cameras being around and that made it easier for her to focus.

I asked Sabrina what it was like to watch the show and see the edited episodes, compared to her own memories of those events. She had a wonderful attitude about it because even though she thought she would end up a fan favorite instead of a villain-type character, she still felt blessed to be a part of the project. There was an interesting split in views of her character: many saw her character as confident and driven while others saw her as arrogant and cocky. Some saw her as a bully, while others saw her as the one being bullied. I think it speaks to the skill of the editors on the production team who created a storyline out of hundreds of hours of raw footage. They were able to cut scenes together in ways that allowed for interpretation by the audience and allowed the viewers to create vastly different impressions of the characters. 

We also talked about the trailer for the show versus the show itself, because the trailer seemed to cause the biggest negative reactions in the ballroom world. Sabrina did hear from people who didn’t have a good impression of the show when the trailer was first released, but when they watched the show itself, they changed their minds. We agreed that the trailer was created for the Bravo audience rather than the ballroom audience, which is why it was packed with more allusions to sexual tension, drama, conflict, etc. In the end though, Sabrina felt the show really spoke to how hard pro-am dancers work, how fiercely passionate we are about our sport, and how much we juggle in our lives in order to pursue our passion. She was proud of how the show turned out and happy that our stories as pro-am dancers had this opportunity to be told.

What’s Next

Now that the first season of Dancing Queens is over, Sabrina plans, of course, to continue dancing and hopes to encourage more people to try ballroom dancing themselves. Future competitions are up in the air right now, as she wants to make sure the event she chooses next doesn’t interfere with her family time. She’s also loving her venture into American Smooth. She describes Smooth as “so beautiful and so hard”, but she’s excited to see where that takes her. 

I want to thank Sabrina for sharing her story with me and my readers! I hope everyone enjoyed this series on the show Dancing Queens. If you missed any of the episodes, it’s still available to stream on Peacock and Bravo’s website. Please also check out Sabrina’s beautiful bags and other dance accessories on her website, SabiChic.

Happy dancing!

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