Dance for Joy

Riem Higazi quickstepped outside of her comfort zone and straight into happiness.

Von Riem Higazi

This year was a real turning point for me and I will always remember 2017 as perhaps the best year of my life. And you know why? Because I finally allowed myself to do what I had thought I wasn’t allowed to do and that is dance.

When I was little, I wanted to be a dancer but I never dared to pursue that dream because I thought my body type and my entire demeanour did not have the grace and elegance I believed was required of a dancer. I did a little back-up fly-girl dancing for my brother’s breakdancing performances in our garage back in 1982 and I danced at discos in my teens and twenties like lots of people do, but I suppressed my longing to learn how to dance Tango and Salsa and Slow Waltz and Rumba and all the Latin and Standard dances.

In my late thirties and forties, I gained a significant amount of weight and well, that put a real stop to even thinking about dancing. When a dance performance would come on TV or pop up in my social media timeline, I would immediately switch it off or even delete it. I couldn’t bare to see the movements and expression and passion I felt I would never be able to participate in. Then I got a call from the ORF TV director. She wanted me to be on Dancing Stars.

And you know what I did? I completely shat myself and said yes and it was one of the absolute best decisions I ever made in my life.

Reasons dancing made me the happiest I’ve been in my life:

1. It makes me proud of myself.
2. After a dance class with Mitko (which I continue to do), the serotonin in my system is off the charts and my gums hurt because I’m grinning so hard.
3. It made me realise how people of all ages and political persuasions can totally agree on the joy of dance. It is a universal binding language.
4. I lost a good chunk of weight and have the best energy I’ve had in years.
5. It’s given me a few new friendships that I cherish and lift my spirit immensely.
6. It’s strengthened relationships with friends and family and made us closer and inspired things like this:

I would like to thank all my colleagues and friends at FM4 for their support in my dancing journey towards happiness. I would also like to thank Kathi Zechner, the ORF TV Director for seeing a potential in me that I kept a deeply buried secret for all my life. I would like to thank all the people in all of Austria and even a few in Switzerland and Germany who sent me masses of letters and luck and affection and joy. My family, well, they’re still crazy about my stint on Dancing Stars and the final was back on the second of June
—they were and are unbelievably supportive.

Most of all though, I thank Mitko. He gave me the confidence to become the dancer I always wanted to be and to attain a real true happiness.