His advice, after shepherding life and dance partner Cheryl Smith, to the heights of international competition at Blackpool in Great Britain in May, is to "keep your elbows out and up and protect your woman".

Ballroom, he adds, is all about the female. "You are the frame, she is the picture".

The Melbourne-based 40-something professional instructors were two of almost 400 entrants in this weekend's National Capital Dancesport Championship at the Australian Institute of Sport Arena.

It was their first major outing since they took out fourth spot in the Masters Open Latin at the Blackpool Dance Festival.

Ms Smith said the trip to England was both a 35-year comeback and the realisation of a dream.

"I had not danced competitively since the 1970s," she said. "Then I had a bout of ill-health that brought home to me what I had almost lost. I said to Paul, 'Once I get better I want to dance competition [again]'."

He thought it was a great idea and a lot of hard work soon had them on the road to Blackpool, the world mecca of dance where, as Ms Smith said, "decisions are made that are final".

Ms Smith said she had gone through three days of sheer terror; the calibre of the competition was even higher than she had expected.

"To do well at Blackpool it's not enough to be perfect," she said. "They [the competition] are all perfect; you have to be perfection plus and bring something extra to the dance floor or you will just disappear in the field."

A massed Australian cheer squad coupled with the experience of dancing to a live orchestra helped the couple take their performance to another level.

"Just being on the floor and in the presence of these gods of dance made you feel like a champion," Ms Smith said.

Mr Zaidman, a citizen of the world who was born in Russia and lived in Israel before migrating to Australia at age 10, notes some of those gods can be harsh, mercurial, and not a little vicious when the chips are down.

"It [Blackpool] is certainly a battlefield," he said. "It was elbows out and up; some of those chaps were taking no prisoners. You are protecting your woman; your body weight is forward and you take every gap."

Extremely proud to have represented his adopted country, Mr Zaidman's voice filled with emotion when he described seeing the Australian flag just before taking the floor for the final. "After I saw the flag there was no stopping us."

Mr Zaidman and Ms Smith said the Canberra competition was a very professionally run event and the venue (the AIS arena) was a cut above what other Australian competitions offered.

"You are usually dancing on basketball courts," Mr Zaidman said. "The floor here is brilliant. This is our first time; we are using it as a warm-up for the World Championships in Italy next month.

"Before we came, my coach told me I needed to concentrate; that this is on the way to becoming the Blackpool of Australia. He is right."