Dancers young and old prepare for annual Carnegie Classic ballroom competition

Carnegie Mellon University ballroom dance coach Christine Zona worked with a new group of students in early September, and she can’t wait to see how they’ve progressed once spring comes around.

“It’s great to see young people who’ve never done any ballroom dancing before come in,” Zona said. “Seeing the growth in them is wonderful. After a couple of years, many of them will probably be running the club and making decisions about what it does.”

Before that, however, they will take part in the Carnegie Classic, an annual ballroom dance competition set for Oct. 10 to 12 at CMU. This will be the event’s fourth year. It takes place under national organization USA Dance.

“It used to happen years and years ago, and it was called the Scotch Ball,” Zona said. “That was in the late ’90s, and they stopped because it was a lot of work to organize.”

These days, CMU’s Ballroom Dance Club handles the logistics. Over the past year, CMU graduate student Brenna Wrubel has served as chair for the event.

“In the past I was in charge of the whole thing, but that’s a lot for a student to do,” said Wrubel, 22, of Cranberry, who had never done any dancing before she saw the Ballroom Club on the CMU orientation schedule during the first week of her freshman year. “We have some community members who help with planning and coordinating now.”

The Carnegie Classic was the first time that University of Pittsburgh student Katie Greene, 20, of Forest Hills danced in a ballroom competition. She has plenty of dance experience, but spent her childhood learning ballet, tap and jazz.

“I wanted to find a way to keep dancing that fit around my school work,” Greene said. “So I joined their ballroom dance club, then later I also joined CMU’s and now I dance three or four days a week.”

Greene said she enjoys working with a dance partner.

“In tap and jazz, you might be part of a group, but you’re dancing on your own,” she said. “In ballroom, you have your partner, and I really liked the opportunity to work with a lot of different people. I’ve met some of my best friends through ballroom dancing.”

Vivek Rajkumar of Monroeville, who graduated from Pitt in 2024 and was a member of its ballroom dance club, said he loves the beauty found within dancers’ movement.

“The essence of ballroom dancing is two people coming together and creating something beautiful, and I found that really compelling,” Rajkumar said. “Top-level dancers can tell a story just through their movements, and I find that very elegant. The club was also really chill group of people where I could just decompress from classes and look forward to having some fun.”

The Carnegie Classic is open to anyone. Participants do not have to be official members of USA Dance’s Pittsburgh chapter to take part. But for those who are, the event is a USA Dance Collegiate Challenge and both college students and adults can rack up some of the points they need in order to qualify for a spot at the National Ballroom DanceSport Championships, which will be held in Pittsburgh in the fall of 2026.

“The Classic is done in a similar format to the national championships,” said USA Dance Pittsburgh President Jane Downing. “There will be heats organized by proficiency level and dance style. The energy level is very high.”

Wrubel said she prefers the “smooth” dance category that includes waltz, foxtrot and tango.

“It’s got a lot of freedom of movement, and that’s what appealed to me,” she said.

Duquesne graduate student Hannah Clark, 23, of Green Tree also prefers the smooth category.

“It allows you to break from ‘frame’ — that’s you being connected to your dance partner — and it allows you to put your own personality into the dance,” Clark said. “In closed frame, you’re constantly connected by both arms, and open frame is a little more relaxed. In the smooth category, we can be doing side-by-side dances, where the closed-frame categories are very technique-driven and not for people who are into flashy moves.”

In addition to the competition, the three-day event includes a social dance and a dance camp.

Wrubel said she enjoys the open format of the Carnegie Classic.

“Ballroom dancing can get pretty expensive, and the collegiate ballroom scene is this nice, tucked-away corner that does a nice job of making it affordable and accessible to anyone,” she said. “Newcomers don’t have to know anything — we teach them enough to be able to compete in two months if they want, we lend out dresses and shoes, and there’s some subsidizing from the university as well.”

Wrubel said she loves seeing dancers’ hard work pay off.

“The Classic takes place right in the space where we practice. It’s our home turf, and I love seeing all of the stress of planning and rehearsing fall away as the event comes together,” she said.

For more information, visit CarnegieClassic.com.