When you're a student, it's often hard to imagine that your teachers have lives outside of school. After all, it's the only setting in which you see them. I remember reading a book in elementary school called My Teacher's Secret Life about a class of children who spy their teacher around town and can't figure out what she could be doing outside of the classroom. As a fourth grader, the book floored me. Teachers are like everyone else. Who knew?

It took me a few years to fully understand that teachers are regular people, but it can still be a bit of a shock to see them in an unexpected setting. Like at a competitive dance performance, for example. At Thursday night's "Dancing with the Brandeis Stars," three professors performed ballroom dance routines with students to compete for the glory of being crowned champion. Last year's winners Prof. Irina Dubinina (GRALL) and Jeff Plotkin '12 took home the title again during a night filled with unexpected and unique performances.

"Dancing with the Brandeis Stars" began in the Shapiro Campus Center Atrium with 45 minutes of ballroom dance lessons from members of Brandeis Ballroom Formation, the University's ballroom dance team. Around 12 dancers were on the floor at any given time, learning moves from various dances such as the hustle, the cha-cha and the rumba.

The competition officially began at 8 p.m. Team president Danielle Vasserman '12 and her partner Dima Khazanov, a pre-champion dancer who works at Dance Fever Studios in Boston, where Formation practices, started things off with a cha-cha. Throughout the evening, Vasserman and Khazanov skillfully demonstrated various types of ballroom dance, earning eager applause from the audience. However, only the student-professor couples were in the running to win.

Aside from Dubinina and Plotkin, Prof. Sabine von Mering (GRALL) and Prof. Sara Hascal (NEJS) also performed with partners Fabien Forge and Michael Keselman '14, respectively. Both these pairs were enthusiastic, if not technically outstanding. It was clear that the point of the night was to have fun and bring ballroom dance to the Brandeis community.

The judges of "Dancing with the Brandeis Stars"—Vasserman, Khazanov and Associate Dean of Student Life Jamele Adams—kept the fun, silly atmosphere going throughout the night, pretending to be the real judges from ABC's Dancing with the Stars, the reality show on which the event was based. Vasserman attempted several accents, and Adams made clear that, although he knew nothing about the finer points of ballroom dancing, he was going to give the dancers critiques anyway.

Aside from the three couples, several of Brandeis' other dance groups also performed, including the Salseros, B'yachad, the Brandeis Swingers and Kaos Kids. One of the most fun aspects of these performances was the groups' costumes. If you've ever caught an episode of Dancing with the Stars, you'll have an idea what I'm talking about. Both male and female dancers' outfits were adorned with glitter and sequins, and most of the groups created color-coordinating looks that added a funky element to their performances.

When "Dancing with the Brandeis Stars" finally drew to a close, the runners-up were Hascal and Keselman, and von Mering and Forge came in third. However, the rankings didn't seem to matter to the crowd of students gathered on the ground floor and up the stairs of the SCC to watch their professors get down. For them, it was just another reminder that their teachers could indeed have a "secret life" they never knew about before.