Each week Integral Ballroom welcomes two tiny dancers to their studio who love to show off their big moves. Murrysville’ s James Berk and Madeline( Maddie) Zalewski light up the dance floor as they partner for various dances including the waltz, foxtrot, cha cha and more as the studio’ s youngest dancers.
James, son of Lindsey and Tim Berk, and Maddie, daughter of Stephanie and Tom Zalewski, live on the same street, are neighborhood friends and are enrolled in the same first grade class at Sloan Elementary.
“ I have been dancing for two years,” explains Maddie.“ I liked to watch my big sister, Olivia, dance with her partner, so I started looking for a partner— and found one on my street!” James couldn’ t resist saying yes when Maddie asked him to be her partner.“ It is fun to dance with Maddie,” he says.
The two were recently featured dancing the foxtrot during Integral Ballroom’ s 2017 Showcase.
“ I love learning new steps and putting them together to make a dance,” says Maddie.“ My favorite style is the waltz because it is challenging and fancy. The cha cha is really fun, too!”
“ Ballroom dancing is my favorite,” adds James,“ especially the box step.”
He and Maddie take lessons from Luanne O’ Brien, a teacher at Integral Ballroom for nine years.“ She’ s a great teacher because she is nice when she points out our mistakes and makes dance class a lot of fun,” says James.
Though the two share the same passion for dancing, they enjoy different things outside of the ballroom. Maddie’ s favorite subject in school is science and she enjoys the class experiments. She hopes to follow in her mom’ s footsteps and become a pharmacist one day, and looks forward to using her dance training to come up with a fancy dance for her wedding.
James enjoys STEM at school and loves to work in a group and build things in class. His hobbies include soccer, swimming, drawing, reading, math and computer games. He aspires to be an author one day.
Though the young dancers have not participated in any competitions yet, they are not ruling out the possibility in their dancing future.“ We have not done any competitions yet but hope to try one someday,” says Maddie.“ We had our first performance at Integral Ballroom’ s 2017 Showcase. It was fun having our friends and family cheering for us!” n
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