Roller skater Joseph Farias III, of Fall River, pauses during practice at the Carousel Family Fun Center, in Fairhaven, Mass. He will be competing in the world championships next month, and will hold a fundraiser on Oct. 27 to help pay for travel expenses.

The Providence Journal / Glenn Osmundson

As a child, he went to the roller rink to get away from one of the grittier neighborhoods in Fall River, where he grew up.

For Joseph Farias III, roller skating has become a lifelong passion, propelling him to become part of an international championship team in precision skating while he was still a teenager.

In the last eight years, he has continued to compete, cornering the national solo dance championships in 2007 and 2008.

Farias, 27, now plans to make a bid for the first-ever international solo dance championship next month in Taiwan, where he says he will put on a progressive interpretation of ballroom dancing set to the tune of classic standards popularized by Tony Bennett.

A professional hairstylist, Farias juggles his two-year-old business, Celebeautique Hair Spa in Newport, with an aggressive training schedule at rinks in Fairhaven and Whitman, Mass.

Including the drive time between his home in Fall River, his work, and his practice sessions, he puts in 78 hours a week. But to prepare for Taiwan, all that time and effort is not quite enough.

Farias elaborated.

Dancing on roller skates is akin to ice dancing, and both sports are sanctioned by the U.S. Olympic Committee, Farias said. . But unlike the athletes who compete in ice dancing at the Olympics, the participants in the roller skate dancing competition in Taiwan receive no help from the Olympic Committee in financing their expenses for the trip, Farias said.

That means Farias must raise his own travel money, which he estimates will be about $10,000 for himself and chief coach John Viola of Norton, Mass.

To raise money, Farias will put on a skating exhibition and sponsor a raffle and silent auction Oct. 27 at the Carousel Family Fun Center and Roller Skating Rink in Fairhaven, Mass.

Farias was only 7 or 8 years old — an only child — when his parents first took him to a skating rink, the former Star Wheels on Route 6 in Seekonk.

At the end of the session, a professional skater approached the family and suggested lessons for young Joseph.

His skating career grew as he developed into adolescence and adulthood.

The initial draw was the friendship and camaraderie among other children who liked skating — something he did not have with his classmates at school in Fall River.

The pre-teen years awakened a competitive drive in Farias. He won his first national championship in 1991 in compulsory figure skating, a technical exercise that he said builds concentration and mental discipline.

“I call it yoga on skates,” he said.

Skating in a precise circular path, “you have to be inside your head concentrating, feeling every single action and turn,” Farias said.

“You have to heighten your inner ability to know where you are in space and what you’re doing,” he said.

For children and teenagers, the mental benefits cross over to improved concentration in school work, he said.

Competitive skating enabled Farias to travel all over the country — as far as California — and meet many different people, expanding his world far beyond his home town.

Farias’ visit to Taiwan will be his first trip abroad, however.

He said he works 15 hours a week with a total of four coaches and spends another three hours a week on strength training at a gym.

The coaches, husband-and-wife teams John and DeeDee Viola, of Norton, Mass., and Scott and Jodee Cohen, of Raynham, Mass., address not only Farias’ skating but everything from choreography and costume design to hand gestures during the performance.

The dance program is inspired by the way that fashion periodically reaches back in time and comes forward with a reinterpretation of the classics, he said.

For the music, Farias has turned to Tony Bennett’s “Stepping out with My Baby.”

He will mix that standard with the syncopated rhythm in Bennett’s “Boulevard of Broken Dreams”, which echoes a little bit of Spain and Argentina, Farias said.

The music will serve as a backdrop for a dance number that will be both classic and progressive, he said.

The fundraiser at the Carousel Family Fun Center and Roller Skating Rink will be from 6 to 9 p.m. Oct. 27 and will include exhibition skating, a buffet dinner, a raffle and a silent auction.

The owner of the facility, Charleen Conway, will donate the rink time, Farias said.

Tickets are $15 for adults and $7 for children under 12. They may be ordered by calling Farias at (401) 742-4011 or sending him an e-mail to Josephfariasiii@mac.com.

gmacris@projo.com