(photo from DanceBeat, taken by Andrew Miller)
Team USA won the team competition last night, as Eleanor and I had expected. Italy took second, Germany third and the UK fourth. We were beaten by Italy in Waltz and Germany in Jive, but other than that, we placed first in all dances. And — Eugene Katsevman and Maria Manusova were our second Latin couple! Go them! I was waiting to see who it’d be since Andrei Gavriline and Elena Kruyshkova retired and Anna Trebunskaya and Pavlo Barsuk seem, very upsettingly to me, to have broken up. I loved them, but oh well. Apparently with our introductory number, the Latin couples came out and did a Tango and Quickstep, then the ballroom couples did Jive and Cha Cha. According to my dispatch from Eleanor, and DanceBeat, it wowed the crowd! (Our second ballroom couple, as usual, was Victor Fung and Anna Mikhed). Eleanor also says Yulia and Riccardo are very good at Standard.
Visit DanceBeat and DanceBeatWorld for full reports.
Also, there seems to be no mention of this on DanceBeat, but Eleanor reports that Franco Formica (from team Germany) looked “mmmm” in tights and no top 🙂 Sounds very ballet!
Update: Aha, am reading up on DanceBeatWorld and seeing it WAS ballet! Formica impersonated Nureyev during their little opening introductory number! Fun! (The German team’s intro consisted of impersonations of Hollywood stars, but DBW calls Formica’s the greatest hit!; do read DBW for the rest: apparently in Italy’s opening number, the men acted as dogs and the ladies their handlers, champ Mirko Gozzoli being the unruliest dog of all, all over the stage and balcony! And England’s theme was the Circus, replete with acrobats and unicyclists, some of the senior champs of yesteryear — think Len Goodman-esque — dressed as animals. I love it.)
In another dispatch from the first day of Congress lectures, Becca reports of Sergey and Melia’s:
“Oh my GOD. Their lecture was the best I’ve ever seen in my life! They are so perfect, and they just got married too!”
Aw, I didn’t know that. Congratulations to them!
Awwww that's so cool! Everything in the blog post is cool, but especially Sergey and Melia getting married 🙂
I really need to keep up with your blog more often.
Anna and Pavlo broke up a few months ago……she moved to SoCal and he stayed in the Bay area. I don't know what he's doing, but she is looking for another partner. I hope she finds a good lead, I would love to see Anna compete actively and surpass her current achievements.
Awwww that's so cool! Everything in the blog post is cool, but especially Sergey and Melia getting married 🙂
I really need to keep up with your blog more often.
Anna and Pavlo broke up a few months ago……she moved to SoCal and he stayed in the Bay area. I don't know what he's doing, but she is looking for another partner. I hope she finds a good lead, I would love to see Anna compete actively and surpass her current achievements.