Surgery? No sweat. It's the Cha-Cha that gets dancing doc nervous.

Cosmetic Surgeon Dances Between Patients

ST. PETERSBURG - Karen Singer by day is a cosmetic plastic, reconstructive and hand surgeon. But, at night she dons her dance shoes and whirls around the dance floor to practice the ballroom techniques that placed her seventh in an Ohio competition last November.

Competing at the gold, or top level, she and her American rhythm teacher were one step from the finals in an event that is "one of the toughest and biggest in North American with 7,000 entries," says Singer.

Singer takes lessons and dances two hours, four nights a week, and when preparing for a competition, she may dance four hours a day. She studies at the Larry Silvers Dance Academy in the Ballroom American styles. She not only excels at American Rhythm dancing, but a year ago took up International Latin Dancing.

"I dance because it is excellent exercise and different from the stillness of what I do every day. It is a mental release. The tensions are different from the tensions of medicine. I actually get more nervous before a dance competition than before surgery," Singer said. She thinks there is a strong connection with dance and her daytime profession.

"I like plastic surgery because it requires an artistic sense. You see results. It is very visual. It makes people feel better about themselves. There is a similar artistic beauty and delicate work in dance, so they correlate."

International Dance has standard and Latin styles. Singer studies the Latin which includes Cha-Cha, Samba, Rumba, Paso Doble, and Jive.

In September at a national competition, the U.S. Ballroom Championships in Miami, Singer and her teacher came in fourth in Samba (her favorite) at the Open Gold Level, fifth in the Cha-Cha, and seventh in the Rumba after only a year in lessons. "One never stops learning dance - even the pros take lessons," said Singer.

Singer came from an artistically involved family, and she performed in creative dances growing up in Washington, D.C. as well as sang with a choir, played the piano and guitar.

She started dancing when a friend thought they should enter a dance show put on by the second year Harvard Medical School students. So, they took lessons. "I fell in love with it then. So I kept going, but he stopped."

She started with Arthur Murray, and later moved on to independent teachers. Singer graduated magna cum laude from Harvard and did not pursue the dancing while completing a surgical internship at Roosevelt Hospital in New York, but pursued it again during her general surgery and plastic surgery residency at St. Barnabas Hospital in Livingston, New Jersey. She continued while on a hand surgery fellowship in Denver and kept dancing when she started her practice in St. Petersburg in 1984.

Since 1991, she started working really hard at the dancing. "Now it is a major interest. Improvement of my dancing has been drastic. To be a great dancer, you have to have a basic talent and training. As you progress, you understand what you need to work on to make yourself better. I've had a lot of help from teachers who felt I had a lot of potential and talent and were willing to work with me to maximize this," said Singer.

She competed in four major and four smaller competitions last year. Levels are based on experience. Within the level, there are different competitions by age, sex and style of dance, she said.

Dr. Singer featured in September 2006 Plastic Surgery News
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