— from an interview from a recent issue of Dance Notes.
 
How do you have so much energy?

Shalene: I think I'm just fortunate. I'm an extrovert, and I love being around people. I love teaching as much as I love my own dancing, and my students are so terrific, they really fuel me. I get excited about their being excited and it is just a wonderful cyclical thing.

Ben: What we said earlier is really the case... there are many of us who have various levels of passion for what we do, and I'd like to think that our passion is among the highest. Some people criticize us for not putting enough into our own professional dancing, for giving our students more than we take for ourselves. But teaching our students is an equal part of our business.

How many hours a day do you teach?

Ben: It depends. As competitions come closer, sometimes it's more. I typically don't do more that 7 or 8 a day. Shalene, on many occasions does 9 or 10 in a day.

And practices, too?

Shalene: Every opportunity we get!

Do you plan to practice a certain time each day?

Shalene: We set aside a slot every day from 12 to 3, where we try to pay attention to our own dancing, and to our own goals. But because we run a business also, there are a lot of things we have to tend to, whether it's paperwork or phone calls or helping our teachers out, or whatever. That, unfortunately, kind of encroaches into our practice time. But we are moving our studio, and are going to be renting space from another facility. All of our staff is going to come with us, but we are not going to have so much of the logistical things, like the paperwork. So, we're excited about the fact that our 12 to 3 hour slot is going to be exclusively ours now and we're really looking forward to that. It's going to be a good year for us.

When you first danced with Shalene, did you know you really wanted to dance with her?

Ben: I knew after a few days. I really believed she would be what she is today, or I wouldn't have continued.

And did you want to dance with Ben, or did you just want to dance?

Shalene: I had danced in a couple of regional Fred Astaire events, in a novice category, and I absolutely loved it. Ben was the most advanced dancer in the studio and in our region and so I knew for sure that he was definitely the person I wanted to dance with. I knew he could take me the furthest, the quickest, and I was excited to get there.

You knew each other for almost ten years before you got married. Why did it take so long?

Shalene: Actually, we'd known for a long, long time.

Ben: For several years, but when do you find the time? We haven't been on our honeymoon yet.

Shalene: It's probably going to be our one-year anniversary before we finally take the time off from the school to go. But we knew. We were together 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and we loved it. And within a year after we were together, we were completely committed to one another. We knew we were going to get married, but I'm quite a bit younger than he is, and…

Ben: Hey, hey, hey!

Shalene: I always knew that I didn't want to get married when I was 20 or 21. I wanted to wait until I was a little bit older, because people change a lot in their twenties. We had a beautiful, beautiful wedding this year. It was everything I ever dreamed it would be.

Ben: And she didn't give up her teaching schedule to plan it. That was in July, and we had a big competition the next weekend, in Nashville.

Shalene: So we couldn't take a honeymoon, but we will definitely take one soon. We plan to go on a Mediterranean cruise.