Tag: Blackpool Dance Festival

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Blackpool Pics Up!

I’ve now posted many of my pictures from Blackpool on the photo page. I’m a Latin girl, so most of them are of the Latin comps. Plus, the Brits take their Standard VERY seriously and I couldn’t find a good, ground floor seat for basically any part of the pro Standard comp, so my photos of Standard are from the balcony. Unfortunately, I stupidly forgot to set my camera to PC mode for the first day, so my pictures from the beginning of the festival are going to have to be Photoshopped down in size and may take a while to post — those photos were mainly of the team match. Each of the four teams — Italy, Japan, the U.S., and the U.K. preceded their dancing with these cheesy little playletts. Italy did a futuristic vignette, I forgot what Japan did, and the U.K. had the team ride out onto the dance floor in a double-decker bus driven by a drunk driver in his underpants. Apparently, there must have been something in the tabloids recently about a drunk bus driver in his underwear because the crowd went wild over this. And we did this corny but fun Disneyland theme where all of the dancers dressed as various Disney characters. Andrei Gavriline played Donald Duck. And then the team captains played George Bush and Dick Cheney; once Cheney saw Donald he whipped out a rifle and began chasing him around stage, and of course when he took a shot he missed Andrei and got the president. So that’s what is missing from my first day pics — the U.S. national Latin champion waddling around stage in a giant duck costume.

So, highlights from the last day were definitely the Underdogs of Standard, and hence my favorites since I am an underdog-rooting sort of person: the U.S. couple Victor Fung and Anna Mikhed. Anna wore this very sweet green dress with a black cape and matching hat. It was truly original, very 1920s and very sweet. She was the queen of class in that dress! They’re such a charismatic couple to me — I know nothing about Standard so can’t judge anyone’s actual dancing, but I just can’t take my eyes off them when they are on the floor. They made it to the semi-finals. And Jonathan and Katusha from the U.S. (U.S. national Standard champs), placed third. Katusha wore two beautiful gowns — a gorgeous white one for the first several rounds, and a sleek black for the finals. (How expensive it must be to be a female Standard dancer — yikes!) I was somewhat disappointed because my second favorite Standard dance is Viennese waltz and they didn’t have it in this competition — the dancers competed only in the other four. Why is that — why no Viennese waltz in Blackpool??? My second favorite is Quickstep and it was worth it to watch the whole comp just for that — the way the big beautiful ballgowns bounce around the floor is such an amazing sight. Timonthy Hawkins and Joanna Bolton from the U.K, in my opinion, have the best Quickstep (they placed 2nd overall, but I think 1st in Quickstep) and they do this really fun step that I think he called a slide, which is a kind of combination jump and skid that precedes a run. It looks like so much fun, but so hard because you both have to jump the same distance and at exactly the same time and you’re in such a close embrace, you really have to move as one or you’re going to go down. And he always gets this excited English schoolboy look on his face when he does that step — so cute!

Also on the last day was the Latin formation team competition, which one of the two Chinese teams won. They did a lot of lifts and complicated tricks, which I know from being on a swing team myself, even just doing easy things is hard when you have to have everyone moving in exactly the same way at precisely the same time — particularly hard for partner-dancing — for it to look decent. Still, as amazing as such precision was, this competition didn’t do much for me. I think I’d seen so much incredible Latin body movement to be impressed with people just dancing in unison. And I was getting really tired toward the end. I don’t think I could have walked into that Winter Garden one more day!

My flight out of Manchester was delayed on Saturday, and I didn’t get in until Saturday evening. And then I had a ticket to the ABT, which of course I couldn’t miss because Marcelo was dancing! Even being half asleep from basically not sleeping for 8 days and then being jet-lagged on top of it, I loved their new version of Cinderella. It was great fun — Erica Cornejo was a riot as the dorky stepsister. She had a funny part to begin with, but she took it to the extreme and it was really her show. It’s seriously worth it to see this ballet if just for her! And Carmen Corella was the other, wannabe seductress but sweetly goofy stepsister. She was very good too. I think she’s really so beautiful. Her face is so interesting and she has the ideal female dancer body. And of course Marcelo is the perfect prince 🙂 The ABT spoiled first-time subscribers by letting us sit in the orchestra for relatively cheap — so I felt like they were all dancing right in front of me!

Anyway, tonight I have my lesson with Luis, and am so tired. And, I am just now realizing I didn’t think at all about overcoming my fears of doing overhead lifts during Blackpool, like I was supposed to have done. Ugh. Not that we’re going to be doing any such thing right now though because, on top of not having stretched for over a week (on my first day in Blackpool, I tried to use the top of the dresser in the B&B as a barre and almost broke it — oops!), I have definitely definitely gained from all of those English breakfasts and Cadbury bars!

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Greetings From Coney Island, U.K. II

Broke down and exchanged $40 more for pounds, so I have more money to spend at the trendy little internet cafe, which also serves delectable mochas, coincidentally. I have lots more time to kill as well since the last comp of the festival — the Pro Standard — doesn’t begin until 4 p.m. and I’ve thoroughly roamed — and bought out — all of the festival merchandise stands.

Last night was the pro Invitational Exhibitions comp, which, strangely, wasn’t all that impressive to me. Maybe it’s because it was one of the two events (together with the pro Latin) that I’d been looking forward to. It’s only invitational, so the Blackpool dance committee has to invite the couples, and they only invited 7, and, for some reason, everyone limits their performance piece to about 3 minutes, so the event was over practically before it even began. Definitely Hanna Karttunen and Victor DaSilva from South Africa, who won, were spectacular with their lifts and gravity-defying tricks (they do this one where he lies on his back and rests his body weight on his forearms and holds her body in a lift with his feet), but I don’t know — maybe I’ve seen too much ballet, where the dancers perform just as, if not more, physically demanding pieces and go on for longer. And I think with these exhibitions, they’re more about theatrical, death-defying tricks preceded by drum rolls than about artistry and beauty and with a story-line, like ballet. Maybe I’m just too much of a ballet head to have a lot of appreciation — which is a shame for me since this is the kind of ballroom dancing I most want to do. Oh well, I can seek to be original, right, and do ballroom/ballet — if Pasha and Luis will let me…

Very excited today though because I found a quaint cobble-stoned street with a few benches in the sun, and, because it’s my first day here that it’s been ‘nice’ — meaning not 40 degrees below, I sat outside. A local guy passing by said to me, ‘Dancing are ye?’ Even though I spent a semester in London as an undergraduate, I don’t seem to be able to understand the accents here very well, so I had to ask him to repeat himself. When I finally got it, I smiled and shook my head no. But it made me feel really good because I feel like I’ve gained a good 20 pounds here — eating greasy bacon, sausage, fried eggs, and baked beans every morning at my B&B (using as my excuse that it’d be too rude to the landlady to not finish my plate!), and I’ve developed the nasty but delicious habit of whenever I travel to Europe, sampling every single kind of chocolate that we don’t have in N.Y. — a magnificient way to ‘experience another culture’!! Anyway, after the guy passed by, the proprietor of a flower shop across the street called out to me, ‘You do look like a dancer. Lemme guess, Polish, right?’ I said no, American, laughing. He said, ‘Oh, oh, sorry,’ like he’d just made a huge blunder. It’s so weird to me though, because every time I come to Europe, I have this weird experience of people either asking me really slowly if I can speak English (as a young guy here did trying to sell his festival ticket to me on my first night), or people just start speaking Russian, or Spanish, to me. I don’t know how I could look both Eastern European and Spanish, but clearly (and cooly), I must not look American!

Back to dance… So, I have new favorites here — Latin semi-finalist Yulia Zagoruychenko, whom Mika knows and introduced me to and is very sweet in addition to being, I think, the greatest Samba dancer here. She and Maxim performed their routine from Ohio again during one of the lectures / demonstrations the top coaches and dancers give during the first two days of the festival. It’s called the Congress. This year, Len Goodman, judge of ‘Dancing With the Stars’ in the US and ‘Stricly Come Dancing’ in the UK gave one on tango (interspersed, I might add, with many dirty British-style, Benny Goodman-esque jokes — who know he had this personality?!). Also, the American team coaches gave one on what it’s like to teach in the world’s fast-food capital where teachers are expected to impart the basics of every extant ballroom dance in a single one-hour lesson (mainly geared toward Eastern Europeans considering emigrating but also funny for everyone); Latin’s top dancers Carmen and Bryan Watson gave a very funny one on how not to try to play-act actually being a bull and matodor during Paso but just dancing the dance; America’s top standard couple, Katusha and Jonathan (whom I’ve decided looks like Ralph Fiennes) gave a very polite one on the Viennese Waltz; legendary dancer and now coach Shirley Ballas gave one on the similarities and differences between Latin and Ballroom — specifically tango versus Paso, and foxtrot versus samba (I hadn’t realized how many similarities there actually were…), and the Congress ended with the most celebrated Latin couple in the world, Donnie Burns and Gaynor Fairweather, now nearly 50 though Gaynor honestly looks in her late 20s — who gave a somewhat tear-jerking but funny lecture on what Blackpool, now celebrating its 80th birthday, has meant to them over the many years they competed — a perfect lecture for a first-time Blackpool-goer. There were many more lectures, but too many for me to mention here — but for a newcomer to Blackpool, the pre-competition lectures were essential to the dance festival experience.

And my other new favorite is Sergei Surkov, a Latin dancer from Poland who placed 7th overall with his partner. I had the fortune of seeing him dance up very close, as he did both his early-round cha cha and rhumba right in the corner where I was sitting. He’s absolutely gorgeous — looks a lot like Keanu Reeves — and he moves incredibly well and makes amazing lines. I know Mika would think I’m silly for not thinking of these dancers more as couples, but I don’t yet. I still see them individually, the way I do most ballet dancers. Maybe that will change as I grow more experienced in ballroom.

Okay, the two computers in the internet cafe are very very in demand on a Friday, so I must get going. It’s been a really wonderful time for me here. I’ve learned so much and seen so much and this trip has been so worth it. But, I am getting extremely ballroomed out and am very ready to come home. Tomorrow morning I fly home, and tomorrow evening I will see yet more dance — Marcelo Gomes, my love!, and Julie Kent fly on a pumpkin in the ABT’s Cinderella…

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Greetings From Coney Island, U.K.

Don’t have much time to write because the only internet cafe in Blackpool is exorbitantly expensive. This town is hilarious. It’s a total holiday area, not at all unlike Coney Island, complete with loads of casinos, pinball machines, a boardwalk, posters for circus and way-off-the-West-End shows, and even a huge ferris wheel. Now I know why so many of the B&Bs I found on the internet specified they were for quiet singles or couples only (and there are all these rules posted in mine absolutely prohiting overnight guests. How do they enforce that?!). It gets very raucous here at night, and it’s definitely not the dance crowd, who are all far too panic-ridden right now to be partying.

Mika, who knows everyone and everthing in the Latin ballroom world and has been an amazing resource, has now returned home, as she is only a Latin person, so I’m on my own for the last two days now, which are devoted to Standard (amateur today and pro tomorrow, with two treats for me thrown in — the exhibition comp tonight and the Latin formation team tomorrow– whatever that is… I’ll be excited to see.

But last night was by far the biggest night for me — the Latin pro. Carmen and Bryan Watson from Germany won — no surprise; they’ve won every year for the past several. The amazing Joanna Leunis, who does spins like no one I’ve ever seen in my life, including prima ballerinas, and her partner Michael Malitowski from Poland won second, and Katarina Venturini and Andre Sculfa won third. Most exciting for me though was Karina Smirnoff, my favorite dancer in terms of artistry who regularly places in the finals. Normally, the couples who placed at least in the semis in the prior year don’t have to compete in the first two qualifying rounds, but because Karina broke up with her former partner, Slavik, and now has a new one, she wasn’t exempt from those two initial rounds. So, I got a great seat up front before the masses arrived for the later rounds and got many many many great pics of her. She is so gorgeous. And pure muscle. Such a star. The crowd went wild when her heat was called and she took the floor. And, funny, I never realized it til I saw her up close, but her face really looks like Madonna’s. Unfortunately, she and her new partner are dancing for Russia, so she’s no longer a U.S. competitor. (They came in 4th by the way). We had no Americans make the finals this year, but the two top US couples both made the semis. Tomorrow, the US does have two couples who place well in the Standard comp, so that one should be a lot of fun.

As for the team match, Italy won, and I’m told by one of Mika’s friends who added the points up, Japan came in second, US third, and UK fourth, which was the first time in history the UK didn’t place first. But that math wiz also said the US came in first in Latin, so good for Andrei, Elena, Maxim and Yulia — it’s true, if there was no Russian immigration to the US,we’d have no team!

Okay, I have a lot lot lot more to say about this most brilliant of all dance festivals, but have to sign off now or I won’t have enough pounds stirling to get myself home. Will be writing much much much more when I return to NY and will be posting tons and tons of pics on the photo page of this site as well… (have nearly taken 400 and still have two days to go…)

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Off to Blackpool!

Am all packed and ready — very excited! Unfortunately, the weather’s going to be crap — rainy and highs in the 50s everyday, so no beach time. But, according to Mika, one of Pasha’s students whom I’m to meet there, I won’t have any time to go to the beach anyway. Mika’s been a few times before so I’m glad to have someone to show me around and hang out with. She says the team match is one of the most exciting events, and the U.S. has a great team this year. Our awesome team consists of:

For Standard: Jonathan Wilkins and Katusha Demidova,

and Victor Fung and Anna Mikhed

And for Latin: Andrei Gavriline (who teaches at my studio!) and Elena Kryuchkova

and Maxim Kojevnikov and Yulia Zagorouitchenko

I’ve seen Andrei dance in person and he’s amazing — he’s a tall, thin man and he’s so light he just seems to fly across the dance floor. And his wife and partner, Elena, is so tiny and gymnastic she looks like she’s just floating up into his arms during their lifts. Andrei and Elena and Maxim and Yulia took first and second places respectively in the America’s Ballroom Challenge competition in Ohio last November, which was televised on PBS in February. Maxim and Yulia did an amazing samba for their showcase — if I could only move like that woman!

Jonathan and Katusha and Victor and Anna didn’t compete in Ohio because there was an international standard competition going on in England at the same time. They are both very popular couples, and Victor seems to be a crowd favorite. When the emcee in Ohio announced that they had just placed in the finals in England, everyone started cheering. Mika says Victor does a mean tango!

I am crushed though because my teacher Pasha and his partner Anna won’t be able to go. A few days ago someone broke into the studio and stole her purse, which contained her passport and work visa. There was no way both the U.S. and Russian governments could re-issue her papers so soon, so she can’t leave the country right now. She may have to go back to Russia to get another passport because renewing from here will take months. What an immense pain. I had really wanted to see them dance and they had a real shot at placing in the quarterfinals if not the semis, so it is really really unfortunate. At least they will have a chance again in another year — Blackpool is the Olympics of Ballroom, but thankfully for all of us, it happens four times as often!

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So Afraid to Go Over the Guy's Head!

Very happy that Pasha is now back in the studio after spending the last three weeks traveling around the country with his students doing Pro/Am competitions. So, we discussed how to not look like a spaghetti by: exerting more control over my body; finding my center and keeping it solid; being grounded (instead of thinking about dancing as akin to flying — it only looks that way and humans really can’t fly); thinking about the lines I’m trying to create; and deciding the character of the piece — ie: I am a girl in love, not a swan, so no flapping arm-wings… He also made me feel much better about not being able to developee my leg all the way up near my head yet, telling me it’s one of the hardest things to do in ballet because it requires great strength and control, and not just flexibility, like it looks.

On the other hand, Luis showed me this crazy overhead lift he wants me to do with him that looks similar to the Bird from Dirty Dancing, but is supposedly easier since I’m pressing down on his shoulders from above and he’s supporting my hips. We tried it but I’m just so scared to go over his head! So, I only went halfway up. He assured me he was strong and told me he wouldn’t do anything with me that he didn’t know I could do and the only thing holding me back was my fear. How do female dancers get rid of those fears?!!! He also wants me to do this cartwheel over his head and land in this Firebird-looking position on his back. Yikes — I’ve been dancing barely two years now and have no gymnastics background! So, anyway, my task over the next week and a half while I’m out of the studio and in Blackpool is to try hard to overcome my fears.

I want to try one of those hand-free fishes, where the girl is in a fish dive and the guy lets go and she holds onto him with her leg wrapped around his back — don’t know exactly what they’re called. No one seems to know what I’m talking about and the way I describe it, they say it sounds physically impossible, which it probably is for me now… But it can’t possibly be as hard as flying over the guy’s head! I’ll have to bring to the studio the picture of Marcelo Gomes and Gillian Murphy doing it in The Ballet Book.

Speaking of which, Monday night is ABT’s opening gala! And next Friday begins Blackpool!! So many exciting things…

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Blackpool!!!

Very excited! I just received an email from one of the Blackpool B&Bs I’d queried weeks ago asking if they still had a room available for the dance festival in late May / early June, and the last one just responded with a “yes!” So, I quickly called the Winter Gardens and confirmed that they still have standing room season tickets available, made a plane reservation to Manchester, and, except for the train tickets between Manchester and Blackpool, I’m all set! Now I can’t get that “Manchester England England” song from “Hair” out of my head… I’m so excited — my first year there! I can’t wait to see the beautiful flowing ballgowns encompass the entire floor during the Standard comp — especially the Quickstep when the dancers are just flying — ah, such a fairytale…