This summer’s ballroom dancing hit, ABC’s “Dancing with the Stars,” enraptured the nation. But while most merely dreamed of dancing gracefully, Harvard student Mariko E. Cantley ’06 was living that Ginger Rogers-esque dream. Having only first tried ballroom dancing the summer before her freshman year, Mariko spent last summer traveling, practicing; finally, she decided to go professional with ballroom dancing.

Like most girls, I started dancing ballet at age five. And I continued with ballet until the end of my junior year in high school. With ballet, if you want to reach the top level and dance with ABT or the NYC Ballet, you have to be 5’6, 110 pounds, have perfect turnout and great extensions naturally. I wasn’t willing to deal with that. I also wanted to attend Harvard and needed more time to study, so I quit ballet right before my senior year at [Buckingham Browne and Nichols]. One year later, at Harvard’s pre-frosh weekend, I noticed a ballroom dancing show listed in our events pamphlet. Interested, I decided to go. Standing in the back of the room, ironically behind Miguel Arguellas ’06, who would become my dance partner later that summer, watching all the ballroom dancers, I thought, “Oh my God. I have to do this.”

Acting on a dancer’s passion, Mariko contacted the president of Harvard’s ballroom team and was invited to sit in on a summer social dancing class.

I took my first ballroom dancing classes over the summer before my freshman year. It was a very diverse class, considering I was used to ballet class with 15 other teenage girls just like myself. In the ballroom classes, dancers ranged from teenage girls to 50-year-old men. And it was interesting to note that peoples’ dancing abilities might not necessarily follow one’s preconceived notions about that dancer.

Joining Harvard’s ballroom dancing team that fall, Mariko soon benefited from the training and visiting professional dancing coaches.

The Harvard team provides training for all dancers, those who have no experience and those who have a lot. There are different levels of dancing styles, bronze, silver, gold, and open, and the Harvard team takes you through that formal process, while also serving as a social outlet. Unlike ballet, where you just stand at the bar by yourself, Harvard ballroom forces you to meet and dance with many new people. And because the upper-level dancers teach the newer members a lot of the time, everyone eventually gets experience teaching. Through the team, I was introduced to Carlotta Jorgensen (“Dancing with the Stars”), who soon became my dancing role model. Possessing great artistic expression while maintaining a lot of class, Carlotta is also just a wonderful person. Interacting with and taking lessons from her is an inspiring experience. She makes you feel like you have a path to follow, and if you just listen to her, you can be the best you want to be. We don’t have the type of relationship where I would call her up after a competition, but she is staying at my house when she comes to coach the ballroom team next week.

Following her daughter’s lead, Mariko’s mother began taking ballroom lessons at a Waltham dance studio. While there, Mrs. Cantley took lessons from Peter Walker. After Mrs. Cantley introduced Peter and Mariko, the two began competing in professional-amateur competitions together.

My partner, Peter Walker, and I started dancing together at the end of my junior year, when I stopped dancing with the Harvard ballroom team. We began as a Pro-Am couple, he as the professional and me the amateur. I paid him for training and competing with me. I definitely improved a lot dancing with Peter. I feel like I’m doing things now that I didn’t conceive of last year. However, we only started talking about dancing together professionally less than a year ago. This summer, I went to competitions in Florida, New York, and Los Angeles, practiced a lot, and decided that I would go for it. Last Monday, I officially became a professional ballroom dancer by logging onto the NDCA website, paying $70, and stating that I would compete professionally from now on.

Now practicing their international standard waltz or tango for two hours a day, six days a week, Mariko and Peter plan on dancing professionally for awhile yet. With plans to teach at the Waltham dance studio where she currently practices, Mariko hopes to split her post-graduate time between teaching and competion.

While I think I’ll eventually want to do something more academically challenging in the future, like earn my master’s or Ph.D. in history, art history, or literature, right now, my goal is to make it to the [dance] finals in the next 4-5 years. It would be great to do that at the Ohio Star Ball, but especially at Blackpool in England. If you can make it to the finals at one of those, then you’re an international ballroom superstar. At my 10-year reunion, it would be amazing if I had just come in third at Blackpool. That would be pretty nice. I would have no complaints.