Luckily, there’s a doctor on the dance floor.
Next time you see Louis Rice, MD, Joukowsky Family Professor of Medicine and chair of the Department of Medicine, waltzing through the hallways of Rhode Island Hospital, ask him to show you his moves. Rice won the People’s Choice award during the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society Rhode Island Chapter’s Dancing with the Doctors fundraiser in April. He and his dance partner, Joanne Lapierre, performed a combination of the foxtrot and west coast swing.
Full disclosure: this was not Rice’s first time on the dance floor. One Father’s Day, his wife, Jana, gave him the gift of a dance lesson, which was so much fun that they continued lessons until they left Cleveland for Providence in 2010. The Rices have not found much time to dance in the Ocean State, so in addition to raising money for this worthy cause, Rice says he was grateful for the opportunity to don his dancing shoes again.
“It was hard work, but my lessons were very enjoyable and challenging. I am grateful for Joanne’s patience and for all of the things she taught me about proper dance techniques,” Rice says. “It was also a pleasure to meet and get to know several other physicians from the area and to watch their performances, which were uniformly impressive and included a wide range of dance styles, from Viennese waltz to hip-hop. All in all, it was a great crowd, a great cause, and a great night!”
Rachel Sullivan, MD, an instructor in surgery, won the female People’s Choice award, while chief resident in medicine Megha Garg, MD RES’14 captured Most Entertaining. For her complicated Argentine tango, Assistant Professor of Medicine Iris Tong, MD RES’01 took home Most Technical.
