Tag: Anna Melnikova

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Riccardo and Yulia Cha Cha in Japan

Above is a video of U.S. Latin champions Riccardo Cocchi and Yulia Zagoruychenko dancing recently in Tokyo at the World Superstars Latin Dance Festival. This is an annual festival (there’s one for standard ballroom as well), where the top Latin and ballroom dancers are invited to perform a showdance in each style. I’ve always wanted to go, but have never been able to. I’ve heard it’s prohibitively expensive! But I almost always buy the DVDs of the performances (they’re usually available from DanceVision), which come out a couple weeks later.

According to this write up, the Latin performers this year included, in addition to Riccardo and Yulia, my favorites Sergey Surkov and Melia, and Slavik Kryklyvyy and Anna Melnikova, as well as current world champs Michael Malitowski and Joanna Leunis. Some year I must go!

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SLAVIK KRYKLYVYY AND ANNA MELNIKOVA COMPETE IN US NATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIPS

 

Argh, I knew I should have gone to the U.S. National Championships this year. My favorite male Latin dancer, Slavik Kryklyvyy, and his new partner, Anna Melnikova, just competed in the Open to the World category in Florida. They placed second, behind Yulia Zagoruychenko and Riccardo Cocchi. I can imagine what an exciting comp that must have been though. Here’s a short video of Slavik and Anna’s Cha Cha round. Go here to see more competition videos of the champs in each category.

 

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SLAVIK MAY HAVE A NEW PARTNER AND DANIIL DEBUTS CORSAIRE

 

Blackpool update: Anna Melnikova and Stefano DiFillipo from Italy (above photo by Andrew Miller from Dance Beat World) won the highly coveted Amateur Latin, placing first in all five dances, then announced their breakup. “I hate it when couples split just when they’ve won something major,” says Eleanor. “It’s like Max and Yulia all over again!”

I can’t find anything on Dance Beat confirming this but another friend told me it’s now been announced that Slavik and Anna will compete together — which would be a good reason for her breaking up with Stefano (and would make me very happy … for Slavik I mean).

Dance Beat reports that Valentin Chmerkovskiy and Daria Chesnokova (US champs in Amateur Latin), disappointingly, didn’t even place in the semi-finals.

 

(photo from Dance Beat)

Also, Hanna Karttunen (now broken up with Slavik) has announced that she will return to competing with her former partner, Victor DaSilva (who was on that TV show Superstars of Dance) in the exhibition category. Yes! I was so hoping that would happen!

Latin pro comp is tonight!

 

 

In the ballet world (or my ballet world, rather), the incredible Daniil Simkin debuted last night in ABT’s Le Corsaire (his Met stage debut anyway), dancing the role of Lankendem, the harem owner. (Herman Cornejo was supposed to dance and Daniil’s debut was supposed to be tomorrow night, but Herman is out with an injury, which I’m told isn’t expected to last long, thankfully). I think Daniil did more continuous barrel turns than I’ve ever seen before, traveling around the stage about one and a half times, doing his signature thing by making the very last one high off the ground, super fast, and straight-legged. (I don’t know the ballet term). He also goes up really high on releve (balls of the feet) when lifting his ballerina, which gives her a great deal of height. He danced beautifully with Yuriko Kajiya last night. She looked really weightless in his arms. During curtain calls, he got almost as much applause as Angel Corella’s Ali the slave!

I’ll write more after seeing the next two Corsaire casts, but last night’s opening-night cast for that ballet was excellent: tall, blonde god David Hallberg was perfect as the hero Conrad, by turns romantically tormented over thwarted attempts to get — and keep —  his love, then fearsome and commanding as head pirate (more fearsome and commanding than I think I’ve ever seen David!) Carlos Lopez as Birbanto, Conrad’s friend-turned traitor, and Paloma Herrera as Conrad’s love interest, Medora, were both excellent. I’ve sometimes seen Lopez have some trouble landing jumps solidly, but he seems to have overcome that. He was perfect last night.