Loraina Ghi raldi :Professor of Tango
Long before the recent slate of popular TV dance shows introduced the "Argen-
tine tango" and "paso doble" to mass audiences,
Associate Professor of Psychology
Loraina Ghiraldi was not only executing those dances flawlessly herself, but teaching
others to do them, too.
She began taking ballet and tap-dancing lessons when she was 4, and admits to en-
thusiastically embracing the disco craze in college. In graduate school, she needed a
job that would not interfere with daytime classes. She spotted a newspaper ad saying
that the Arthur Murray Dance Studio was looking to train people to teach ballroom
dance. (You're forgiven if this part of the story seems familiar in a “Dirty Dancing”
kind of way.)
Ghiraldi loved ballroom as much as she had other kinds of dance, so she became a
grad student by day and a dance teacher by night. "That was my first teaching job,"
she says with a laugh. "It was good training for both teaching and the field of psy-
chology, because I had to learn how to work with people. I also had to do a bit of
relationship counseling at times."
Her classmates, she says, gave her "a lot of grief " for taking what they viewed as a
non-serious job, but Ghiraldi loved the job and ignored what they said.
While she no longer teaches classes regularly, she has helped establish a Latin
dance club and a swing dance club on campus and has choreographed routines for the
Dance Ensemble’s annual showcase. She has also taught countless couples – privately
–
to dance for an upcoming wedding, or simply because they wanted to learn.
"
It's so much fun," Ghiraldi says. "Teaching keeps my dancing sharp and I love
sharing my lifelong hobby with others."
G R A D
S T U D E N T
B Y D AY,
D A N C E
T E A C H E R
B Y N I G H T
Steve Horwitz may have seen Rush two
dozen times or more, but Macreena Doyle
is giving him a good run for his money,
having seen Bruce Springsteen perform 20
times, and counting. After managing St.
Lawrence’s news and media relations for
28
years, during which she wrote many
articles for this magazine and caught
countless typos as a matchless proofreader,
Macreena has moved into a new role in
human resources at the University.