{"id":3845,"date":"2019-10-16T14:00:00","date_gmt":"2019-10-16T18:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/54.235.7.55\/?post_type=news-items&#038;p=3845"},"modified":"2022-11-05T14:00:13","modified_gmt":"2022-11-05T18:00:13","slug":"meet-the-dancers-marina-lagocha","status":"publish","type":"news-items","link":"https:\/\/lighthousemi.org\/news-items\/meet-the-dancers-marina-lagocha\/","title":{"rendered":"Meet the Dancers: Marina Lagocha"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"modal-ready\"><p>Dancing in front of a crowd is nothing new for Dancing With the Detroit Stars participant Marina Lagocha.<\/p>\n<p>The 59-year-old started ballroom dancing at age 15 in her hometown of Gorky (now known as Nizhny Novgorod), Russia and regularly performed in competitions and showcases, dancing either with many people or by herself. But she stopped dancing after she moved to the United States at age 34 and only picked it up again four or five years ago.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s always been in my dreams to dance again,\u201d she says. \u201cBut I didn\u2019t know how I could dance again at my age. It\u2019s hard. It\u2019s really hard.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Lagocha is a medical esthetician who works at a beauty parlor in West Bloomfield. Alexandria Riley,\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/southoaklandshelter.org\/2018\/11\/16\/alexandriariley\/\">one of the contestants in last year\u2019s Dancing with the Detroit Stars gala<\/a>\u00a0and the chief development officer for the city of Pontiac, is a longtime client, and asked her if she would be a contestant this year.<\/p>\n<p>Lagocha and her husband left Russia in 1994, just a few years after the collapse of the Soviet Union. It was a period marked by economic tumult as the country struggled to transition to capitalism after decades under strict state control.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt was a strange time in Russia,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n<p>Her husband\u2019s sister had married and moved to America, Lagocha says, and they wanted to try something different as well.<\/p>\n<p>Twenty-five years later, they\u2019re still here. Lagocha and her husband, Marat, an engineer who owns a small construction company, live in Farmington Hills. She\u2019s spent more than 20 years in the beauty industry.<\/p>\n<p>Despite some butterflies about picking up dancing again in midlife, Lagocha says it\u2019s been smooth sailing learning her choreography. She\u2019s teamed with\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.dancenewyork.com\/About_Us.htm\">Clive Phillips<\/a>, an internationally known dance instructor, and has been practicing the roughly 3-minute routine, which she says is a combination of the cha cha, samba and rhumba.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNow I\u2019m dancing for fun with no pressure,\u201d she says. \u201cIt\u2019s truly a joy.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Join us at our annual\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/my.southoaklandshelter.org\/dancing\">Dancing with the Detroit Stars gala<\/a>\u00a0and support Lighthouse. The event takes place Nov. 16 at the Townsend Hotel in Birmingham. We\u2019ll see you there!<\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"featured_media":3846,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"xn-wppe-expiration":[],"xn-wppe-expiration-action":[],"xn-wppe-expiration-prefix":[],"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"news_categories":[121],"class_list":["post-3845","news-items","type-news-items","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","news_categories-events"],"acf":{"photo_gallery":{"gallery":[[]]}},"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v24.6 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Meet the Dancers: Marina Lagocha - Lighthouse<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/lighthousemi.org\/news-items\/meet-the-dancers-marina-lagocha\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Meet the Dancers: Marina Lagocha - Lighthouse\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Dancing in front of a crowd is nothing new for Dancing With the Detroit Stars participant Marina Lagocha. 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