Tag: Dance Competitions

Posted on

It’s Time!

for the U.S. National Dancesport Championships!!! I’m off bright and early tomorrow morning. Will be blogging from there, hopefully via mobile (assuming I can blast some brain waves into my stubborn T-Mobile; the service actually works better in Europe than the U.S., go figure), though I will probably wait to get back home to post all my real camera pics and longer written entries (I finally figured out my problem with Flickr: it gets all confused and has a nervous breakdown when I type in a long text message; post has to consist of a simple picture with minimal text. So for people who like to make fun of me for being a bit photo-crazed — Counter Critic and Danciti 🙂 — that’s why! Okay, at least in part. I confess, when I really like some dance or dancer, I can’t help it; I just start snapping away!)

Anyway, here are my predictions:

Joanna Zacharewicz and Jose DeCamps will become the new American Rhythm champions;

Steve Dougherty and Eulia Baranovksy will take tops in American Smooth;Andrei Gavriline and Elena Kruyshkova will hold onto their crown in International Latin; and

Ditto for Jonathan Wilkins and Katusha Demidova in International Standard.

Of course, I would so love for Emmanuel Pierre-Antoine (pictured at top of the post with his new partner Julia Gorchakova) to win because I like him so much, but, well, we’ll see…

Another favorite couple of mine, in Int. Latin, the sublime Yulia Zagoruychenko (probably one of most artistically sophisticated of all national ballroom dancers, in what is still seen primarily as sport, not art), and her partner Max Kozhevnikov.

In other news: I was informed today that my old studio, Dance Times Square, has arranged a bus to transport 40 or so students and friends to the So You Think You Can Dance concert tour at Nassau Coliseum on October 9th to see Pasha and Anya! Woo hoo! Will I be on that bus or what!!!

Posted on

Day of Merce and Frustration!

Yesterday I went to the Merce Cunningham exhibit at the New York Performing Arts Library at Lincoln Center. At noon there was a short, live, four-person performance of solos and duets right in the lobby. All dancers — two male, two female — wore blue unitards and the music sounded somewhat like the ocean. At times the dancers looked a bit like they were swimming. Of course it was abstract, but that’s what I got out of it.

I then headed into the exhibit, which was really pretty cool. I’m embarrassed to admit it, but this was my first experience with Cunningham (aside from the time Winger Tony Schultz and I saw him in the audience, wheelchair-bound, at another modern dance performance). Embarrassing to admit since he’s only one of the founding fathers of dance in this country! The exhibit was pretty comprehensive and very entertaining. They had videos of several of his works, all performed in the last ten years, but some choreographed far earlier. Cunningham himself danced mainly in the 40s and 50s. He is still choreographing, but of course no longer dancing.

The videos were my favorite part of the exhibit. They had several screens mounted on the wall, you took a chair hooked up to earphones and selected the music from whichever screen you wished to concentrate on. I actually found all screens mesmerizing and it was hard to focus on only one at a time. Funny thing, though, you really didn’t need to. The music (oftentimes sounds — of waterfalls, birds, people talking, etc.) seemed not to matter at all; you could have selected any soundtrack and watched any one of the screens. This, to me, marked Cunningham the complete opposite of Mark Morris, whose choreography is his rendition of that particular musical piece in motion. Also in contrast to how I personally felt watching Morris’s Mozart Pieces on PBS, Cunningham’s choreography was so engaging, I actually didn’t care what the sound was like.

My favorite video was called “How to Pass, Kick, Fall and Run” which was accompanied not by music but by Cunningham and another man, named David Vaughn, reading bits of text to the audience. At times their voices would overlap so you couldn’t even really make out the words, at times you could and the text was very humorous, and at times you just couldn’t pay attention to the text because the moving bodies were just so mesmerizing, even though they weren’t doing anything tremendously virtuostic. One passage, read by Vaughn, told of a man who gave a lecture on how to attend a lecture. He instructed attendees to listen, which they couldn’t do if they were taking notes. One woman was taking notes. The man next to her told her she was not supposed to take notes. She quickly read over her notes and said to the man, “that’s right. I’m not supposed to take notes; I’ve got that written right here.” The audience laughed like crazy. Throughout the reading of the text, the dancers, wearing colorful sweaters over plain black leotards, would jump, hold each other and bounce, kick playfully, scamper across the stage, then do slower prettier arabesques, sometimes with an awkwardly bent standing leg. The movements kind of did and didn’t correspond to the text. If you watched it a couple of times, it did, in a way. For example, at one point Vaughn began a brief vignette in which two women went to a women’s business meeting, and at that point two female dancers would wrap arms around each other and hop on one leg around in a circle, then let go of each other and both hopped toward the front of the stage. Kind of goofy-looking, but then a man emerged and they began a complicated, serious, lift sequence with him. Is a business meeting silly, serious, or both at times? I don’t know. But I found the process of watching the piece a few times and arriving at different conclusions each time rather fun and invigorating. It was also cool to recognize one of the dancers, Holley Farmer, who was in the David Michalek films.

Then, they had tons of pictures of the company performing, from 1945 up through the present, another film showing an interview with Cunningham, numerous costumes some of which were quite colorful and interesting-looking to put it mildly (one was a leotard with aluminum cans taped to the legs! — wish I would have seen that piece!), a bunch of musical scores and choreographer’s notes (the latter of which looked like heiroglyphics to me and made me wonder how in the world choreographers notate a work to preserve it), and some posters by such great artists as Jasper Johns and Andy Warhol promoting the company on tour and at home.

Top pic is of Carolyn Brown dancing with Cunningham himself in the company’s early days, which was interesting to me since I’d recently seen her speak about her new memoir about dancing with Merce, at Jacob’s Pillow (in that picture that I linked to above, from the previous blog entry, she is the woman in the white dress). It was quite a long time ago that she had danced with him and, wow, was she was a striking beauty back then.

Anyway, for people in NYC, I urge you to check it out. It’s a real history lesson, a fun informative trip through time, since Cunningham is such a foundational figure in dance in this country. It closes on October 13th, so you still have some time.

I recently bought a new camera with more pixels, a more powerful zoom, and motion control (so as to take better photos of all the lovely ballroom dancing I will soon be viewing, like tomorrow!) Hopefully, the pics will be better than before (the picture in this entry is better than previous ones, right!). But I’m having trouble uploading from my new software to my Plogger. Spent a good deal of the day trying to figure it out to no avail. It has no problem uploading the pics from my former camera software (which it seems is incompatible with the new camera). Argh, I HATE technology — just can’t figure things out! So, for the time being anyway, I’m using my Flickr account to upload new pictures. I created a link down at the bottom of the blogroll to my Flickr page, which is likely where I’ll end up putting the pictures from the dance competition I’m about to head off to… Have to go pack!

Oh, and my TAC headache seems to be officially over, for now anyway. Yay! Thank you so much, you guys for your concern 🙂 I really appreciate it 🙂

Posted on

Hey Man, Where Are My Peeps Tonight???

Okay, I guess I should check my local Fox listings more often 🙂 I specifically came home from work early tonight (8 p.m. — eh) to watch my favorite show and instead there are all of these men grunting like beasts and ramming their helmeted heads into each other’s bodies??? Where’s my dance!!!

Haha, it’s funny though, because the advertising is sooo different. Has anyone noticed? I don’t know what the commercials during SYTYCD usually consist of because I’ve never really paid much attention, but I know there aren’t all of these bikini-clad women and Bud adverts that seem to me to appeal to the lowest common denominator! It’s kind of sad; I guess there are real gender differences between men and women, or at least the kind of men and women who watch these respective shows. But also interesting to me is that the Fox people seem to know that most SYTYCD-watchers are women and arty, intellectual-type men, no?

Anyway, I was going to blog about this last night but got lazy and tired and had to go to bed after the show, but I’m just so proud of Pasha. I just think he’s doing so well. My favorite Latin dancer in the world has long been Slavik Kryklyvyy — and during my lessons with Pasha, I’d always bring tapes of Slavik dancing with his former partner, Karina, to the studio and ask Pasha if we could try to re-enact some of their lifts and fancy dips. He’d always be the sport and say sure, but I could tell inside he was kind of rolling his eyes — either because they were far above me and he knew he’d be struggling to hold me up 🙂 or because it’s probably just annoying for any dancer to hear how someone worships another 🙂 Pasha’s so great though for letting me drool on and on over Slavik!

Anyway, last night, during the very beginning of the show when they did their little opening half-of-a-second solos, I just couldn’t believe my eyes. He moved just like Slavik. I really think this competition has improved his dancing so much. He’s worked so hard to master all the different kinds of dance styles and choreography to the best of his ability and he now moves in ways that are just breathtaking, so beyond what he did before. I’m just so floored. And, I mean, last night’s hip hop just looked so cute on him. He’s not going to ever be some down-home, bad-ass, hipper than thou, totally hot African-American guy doing hip-hop, but he did his own cute Pasha thing with it, and it was so him and so sweet and so brilliant. And that’s what dance is all about: interpreting something in your own way, adding your style and technique, doing it to the best of your ability, and just owning it. The waltz, as well, was beautiful, as expected. And his solo: I mean, people are saying it was weird (see the comments to this post), and I totally understand what they mean, but I think it was rather ironic: I think he was saying to the judges, “Okay, you say Latin ballroom dancers suck at solos because we’re essentially partner-dancers, so here, here’s a partner-dance for you — I’ll dance with a damn mannequin.” That’s my take anyway…

And, you just never know how someone is going to hold up under pressure. Ballroom dancers dance to normally relatively small audiences — I think the biggest — definitely at Blackpool — must consist of a couple thousand??? I mean, nowhere near the millions who are scrutinizing his every move now. So, I just worry that someone will just crack under the pressure. But not any of these pros 🙂

Okay, I’m done fawning! Oh, but just one more thing: Claudia sent a link to the Blogging SYTYCD blog to some pics she found of Pasha and Anya — these are the photos of them dancing at Blackpool 2005 that I was referring to earlier! Is Anya not absolutely gorgeous!! How much do I want that black dress! Yes, Anya used to have blonde hair 🙂 She looks just bewitching with any color though, if you ask me.

Okay, in other news: I’m excited because I just received in the mail a flyer for the Martha Graham Dance Company, who will perform at the Joyce Theater in Chelsea in a couple of weeks.

I’ve only seen this company a couple of times, but what is so cool is that on the flyer is a picture of Miki Orihara, a newish contributor to my favorite dance blog, The Winger. I’m so excited to see her perform! I personally think blogs are a great way for dancers to communicate with audiences and make new fans. From her Winger posts, Miki seems so incredibly sweet. So, I can’t wait!

Posted on

Places to Score Great Ballroom Videos, Particularly Those Containing Pasha and Anya :)

April had recently asked me where she could get a video of the Dance Times Square showcase I’d blogged about earlier containing Pasha and Anya’s brilliant performances. I directed her to contact the studio itself, as they usually have a professional videographer at the showcase. However, the videos have in prior years included only the student showcases, presumably to prevent choreography-stealing. But, in the last couple of showcases the student performances have been so interspersed with the professionals’ that the videographer has just included them all on the DVD. Anyway, if anyone contacts DTS about the videos, just make sure you ascertain that Pasha and Anya’s pro showcases are on there! Don’t worry; they won’t mind if you ask — they understand!

It occurred to me, though, that there are other places you can find videos of Pasha and Anya dancing, along with other stars of the dancesport world 🙂 Two years ago, in May 2005, they competed at the Blackpool Dance Festival in England and placed second in the Professional Latin Rising Star category 🙂 🙂 🙂 . Quasar Videos makes DVDs of three of the competitions that take place there each year: the Professional, Amateur, and Professional Rising Star. I found the 2005 Pro Rising Star on this website. You can probably order directly from Quasar as well. They’re expensive though (I think they’re around $100). These are live filmed ballroom competitions, so all of the finalists are on the floor at once — they’re not individual showcases like on SYTYCD. But, for people who’ve never seen one, these ballroom competitions are so cool! And Anya had THE most gorgeous costumes that year — one white, one black! It’s too bad that they don’t include all of the competitions on one DVD (meaning Professional and Rising Star Pro) because you’d get to see all of the most awesome dancers (like my loves Slavik Kryklyvyy and Sergey Surkov 🙂 ). But you will still see some breathtaking ballroom dancing — both Latin and Standard.

They also competed in the Ohio Star Ball two years ago (2005), and that was filmed and shown on PBS as “America’s Ballroom Challenge.” If you missed that earlier competition when it aired on PBS (it was from 2005, not last year — they had to miss last year because of an illness), you may be able to purchase a DVD of it through PBS or ABC. If you’re able to get a hold of that one, you will witness how popular Pasha and Anya are with the dancesport crowd. People were NOT happy when they didn’t take one of the first three spots — even Marilu Henner (host) remarked to Tony Meredith (co-host), “wow, this is the most passionate reaction we’ve seen all night!” Annoyingly (I was obviously there that year), the producers did a bunch of “sound clips” — I don’t know if that’s the proper term, but they had a judge walk around the floor while the audience first was completely silent, then on her second walk we all chattered, then on her third we screamed and cheered like a bunch of lunatics. So, when they edited, they took out the fans wildly screaming, “Pasha” “Anya” “Pasha and Anya,” during the comp and replaced it with the quiet sound clip! Anyway, good thing about that competition is that it includes all of the top Latin dancers in the country, such as Andrei Gavriline and Elena Kruyshkova, and Yulia Zagoruychenko and Max Kozhevnikov.

Okay, I’ve rambled on long enough. Hope this helps!

Also, don’t forget about the petition 🙂

Posted on

I Am Goin’ to Nationals!

Just got my plane ticket for Nationals, coming up at the beginning of September, in Orlando, Florida, where I’ve never been! I was actually pondering saving money and not going this year, but my friend, Michele, blasted some sense into me: it’s going to be far too exciting a year to miss. Am now trying to fill out above form to reserve my event tickets — $70 for Saturday night comp and $60 for Thursday and Friday night each — I do wish it wasn’t so expensive, but at least they’ve moved the competition to a cheaper hotel; last year it was in swanky Palm Beach, and the only hotel in the vicinity was the, basically, ten–star one in which the competition was held.

So, no alligators this year 🙂 (Last year, I took a brief excursion from competition madness to visit the Everglades)

Anyway, this is going to be a big year. Because of a couple of important retirements, new champions will be crowned in two events: American Rhythm and American Smooth.

I’m hoping Emmanuel Pierre-Antoine, my former teacher and an excellent dancer, will do well in Rhythm. Well, I know he’ll do WELL, but will he win is my big question?!

 

Or will the king and queen of rhythm be Emmanuel’s former partner, Joanna Zacharewicz and the super cute Jose deCamps?

 

We’ll know Thursday, September 6th, late late LATE night (these competitions are definitely for night owls)

The highlight for me though is always the International Latin. It’s always a showdown between these two:

current national champs Andrei Gavriline (my favorite American man) and Elena Kruyshkova, and

 

my favorite American woman, Yulia Zagoruychenko, and her partner Max Kozhevnikov.

They also have an open-to-the-world category, in which dancers who are not American residents or citizens can compete. Last year I was just in heaven — my two favorite Latin dancers in the world competed in that category: Slavik Kryklyvyy, who is just about my favorite dancer period (excepting this one of course of course:) ) (Slavik’s dancing here with Elena Khvorova)

and Sergey Surkov (parterning Melia).

 

Oh, I hope so so SO much they compete again this year. I’m thinking Slavik may not, may have only competed last year because he’d just broken up with his old partner, Karina Smirnoff and was testing out a new partnership before the really important world comps, but I really do hope he shows at this one. Otherwise, I’m stuck waiting until next May for Blackpool to see him again…

Two people I’m fairly sure who won’t be there are the couple I always long to see of course: Pasha and Anya, who are, sigh, off to bigger and better things these days… Of course I’m so happy for them, but it is sad knowing I’ll likely not see them compete at one of these events again. I’m thrilled though that so many opportunities are opening up for professional ballroom dancers. The same couples win these competitions year after year after year. And, while it’s always fun for us spectators to watch, I can imagine how frustrating it must be to be a professional dancer knowing you’re likely going to place exactly where you have been for the past umpteenth years.

Anyway, unrelated to the USDSC, here’s some interesting stuff I found on the net:

1) Boris Willis has created a funny little “manly dance” for me, apropos of all my blogging on Bad Boys of Dance and Ted Shawn’s Men Dancers, etc. etc. etc. Thanks Boris!

2) The artist David Michalek, who made those Slow Dancing films I was going on about forever, has linked on his site to a bunch of us bloggers who covered the exhibit. So very cool to see artists taking bloggers so seriously and considering us to be our own little form of press! And, I noticed by reading down his list of bloggers that Alex Ross, classical music critic for the New Yorker, posted a couple of pictures of the event on his blog, one of which intentionally includes both Midsummer Night Swing and Slow Dancing together like many of mine do. I’m glad someone else found the two events coinciding with each other interesting. He describes them, though, as “juxtaposed surreally” with each other in the photo. I’m still interested in why people think it’s odd that an exhibit of filmed dancers should coexist with people actually dancing, that people could enjoy both the physical experience of dancing themselves and of watching dance. To me it seems ideal, not surreal, to have these two events co-occur.

3) Root Magazine, based in San Francisco, is having a little thing on burlesque right now. There’s a write-up on a group that has its origins in Samba, which I found interesting. Root’s editor also deals with the feminist issue, which makes me happy.

4) And, finally, as I’m sure most people already know but I was a bit late to discover (oops 🙂 ), there’s a blog devoted to SYTYCD called, appropriately, Blogging So You Think You Can Dance. It’s really pretty good: they have links to practically everything extant on the internet dealing with the show, and they give detailed, fairly objective write-ups of what happened each night (which is great for me since I’m always out and missing it!) Thanks guys 🙂

Posted on

Danny Tidwell Could Use A Bronzed Dance Belt!!!!

Hahhahha! I recently got an email about this earlier post where I was pondering whether I should get Pasha and Luis bronzed dance belts for a holiday gift as an apology for constantly kicking them there during lessons. I’m just so glad, after tonight’s SYTYCD episode that I’m not the only one with that little problem!!

It’s hard to be a male dancer!… What’s up with that look on my face??… Anyway, there we are trying this very cool Karina dip (that I stole from her but can’t do correctly to save my life because, hello, I am NOT Karina!)… This trick is so gorgeous too when done properly IF you can do it properly (when he dips you, it ends up looking similar to the graphic on the top right part of the blog, except of course it should look GOOD, not like that because that is me; I wish I could post a YouTube of Karina and her old partner Slavik doing it because it looks so gorgeous, but they withdrew the clip…) But the trick is so hard because you have to get so close to him and shove your hips into his waist / crotch so that when you arch back you can still hold yourself up and he doesn’t have to throw his back out… And with Rhumba, the beauty of the trick is that you’re coming into him really fast, and with my longish legs, often the left knee that’s kind of humping his back here would be aimed a little farther to the right… He’d shout “hellohellohellohellohello” whenever he needed to warn me. Dancing is so much harder than it looks… Anyway, Argentine tango with all those between-the-legs kicks is just all the worse and I’m sure Pasha is very happy that Argentine tango is not on the International Latin syllabus!

Gosh this is like a lifetime ago! And it’s only last September… Pasha is so incredibly sweet — I just came across these pics recently. He’d agreed to have them taken with me in the studio wearing this Winger t-shirt to model for the Winger! Kristin Sloan (Winger founder and NYCBallet dancer) offered to post pics on the site of Winger readers wearing their t’s at their dance studios or dance-related events, so Pasha nicely let me model the shirt with him 🙂 🙂

I look ridiculously scared!


This was Kristin’s favorite. I look downright in pain! The shirt design is really cool though, right!

I miss him so much! And I miss dancing so much. The most worrisome thing is that, we took these pics right after we’d all returned from Nationals last September (which is on my mind since I’m about to book my tkts for this year — yay!) and I just re-looked at some of my posts on that. I was worried about my flabby butt back then… now, that I haven’t danced in a good — geez eight months — it’s so far beyond sag it’s not even funny. I MUST take dance lessons. I MUST find an inexpensive place.

Anyway, speaking of the Winger, Bennyroyce posted some excellent pics of Bad Boys, the troupe I’d posted on yesterday — they’re far better than mine since they’re up close, or from the perspective of … the Wings! Also, here’s an interesting article in a local Berkshires paper about Rasta and his guys. (Speaking further of the Winger, we still do not know for sure if that dance belt model above is indeed Mr. Hallberg. He would never fess up!!! I think it is — look how similar the face… it’s you, David!)

And coming full circle to Danny and SYTYCD, I was being masochistic and looking up photos of Rasta’s wedding 🙁 and I found this from his ballet school’s alumni page. Look who is in the center of the bottom right-hand picture! And who’s above him — is it Travis from last season?

Posted on

Two New Champions Crowned In American; Same Ole Same Ole for International: Manhattan DanceSport Championships 2007

Very exciting (but very tiring) weekend, nearly all of which was spent at this, the biggest and best of all local (ie: Mid-Atlantic region) competitions! Thanks to the retirements of the two top couples in American Smooth and American Rhythm, we now have two new champions in those divisions. Above are the new champs of Smooth, Eulia Baranovsky and Steven Doughtery. Below are the newly crowned King and Queen of Rhythm, Joanna Zacharewicz and Jose DeCamps.

So often with Ballroom competitions, the same people win over and over and over again, making the dancing itself always spectacular but the results a complete bore if not outright annoyance (if your favorite happens not to be the one who ad nauseam places first). So this year’s dual retirements (Ben and Shalene Ermis in Smooth, and now permanent DANCING WITH THE STARS fixtures Tony Dovolani and Elena Grinenko in Rhythm), made for a couple of very nail-bitingly intense nights all the way up to the 1:00 a.m. trophy presentations.

Above is, awww, my personal faves for Rhythm, second-place couple Emmanuel Pierre-Antoine and his new partner, Julia Gorchakova. Actually, Rhythm this year was a particularly loony soap opera. Ever since I first began coming to this competition, three years ago now, I’ve noticed the Rhythm championship is by far the most raucous of all four categories. Especially during the last of the Rhythm dances, Mambo, when the crowd is just going wild screaming and cheering on their favorite couples so loudly, you can hardly hear the music.

(If you know nothing of Ballroom, and actually care to know :), let me just briefly lay out the blueprint of an American competition: There are four main categories (each of which includes separate competitions for professionals, amateurs, and pro/ams, where students compete with their teachers — the kind I used to do when I still had a bank account 🙂 ):

1) American Smooth (couples compete in 4 dances: Waltz, Foxtrot, Tango, and Viennese Waltz);

2) American Rhythm (5 dances: Cha Cha, Rumba, Swing, Bolero, and Mambo);

3) International Standard (5 dances: Waltz, Slowfox, Viennese Waltz, Tango, and Quickstep); and

4) International Latin 🙂 (5 dances: Cha Cha, Samba, Rumba, Paso Doble, and Jive).

So, back to the Rhythm drama. The crowd favorite has been, for a long time, this couple (pictured below in last year’s National competition: Emmanuel Pierre-Antoine and Joanna Zacharewicz):


For whatever reason, and I don’t want to get into gossip over who initiated and why, they broke up. And with that break-up, fan loyalties were torn asunder, oh no! Emmanuel teamed up with former, longtime Rhythm champion Julia Gorchakova, who, with her former partner, retired a couple of years ago but apparently came out of retirement just for him. And Joanna managed to snag the very cute and rather celebrity-esque, Jose DeCamps, who formerly danced with probably the most famous of the DWTS pro dancers, Cheryl Burke. I haven’t seen Jose before and I’m thinking he retired after Cheryl began her TV stint, and likewise emerged from retirement for Joanna, but I’m not completely sure; he may just have been partnerless.

Well, my heart was with Emmanuel, for reasons I’ll get to in a second, but I just have to say I can completely see why Jose has the fan base he does. He just exudes safe, strong, warm Latin guy, kinda like a certain favorite ballet dancer 🙂

But my loyalties must remain with Emmanuel! Before he left my old studio, I took a few lessons with him, and he was one of the best, most technique-focused teachers I’ve ever had. I wrote about this before (but it was before anyone ever read my blog 🙂 ), but he used to do this thing where he’d start us out with a completely boring salsa basic. I guess just having seen so much ballet, I’m always trying to “fly” as he calls it; I have no connection with the floor basically. It looks like ballet dancers are connecting with the air, not the ground, especially the ballerinas, so that was my aim of course. “Woman! The only reason you’re still upright is because you’re so light!” he’d cry out in his Haitian accent when I’d try a double spin and nearly fall. “All dancers know where the floor is at all times; even ballet dancers,” he’d rant on. Then, he’d close his eyes take me into a closed hold (guy’s right hand on girl’s back shoulder blade, girl’s left hand on top of his shoulder and free hands clasped together) and tell me to visualize myself connecting with the floor. And the freaky thing is, he’d have this uncanny way of being able to tell how well I was mentally connecting to the floor just by feeling my frame. He could honestly tell, with his eyes closed, whether my mind as wandering (thinking, for ex., ‘can’t we do something beyond a stupid salsa basic’), or whether I was concentrating on the floor beneath my feet. And he was always right on the mark about where my mind was. Weird. Anyway, in addition to being an excellent teacher, he’s a genuinely nice guy. He always goes out of his way to say hello to me at all the big competitions, even though he is really a kind of “star” in the ballroom world, and he’d always tell me I did well in a showcase (though I knew it wasn’t true!) Oh, and he’s also an amazingly awesome dancer! Focused on technique though he is in his own lessons, he really puts on a show like no one else. His choreography is so mad fun, his style so wild, he and Joanna were often called upon to perform showdances, for example, on last year’s America’s Ballroom Challenge, and last season’s DWTS.

And what a riotious show-down it was Sunday night! Both Jose and Joanna and Emmanuel and Julia really danced their hearts out. As my friend pointed out to me, the judges’ faces kept seesawing between the two, stopping to focus on absolutely no one else on the floor. “How are they going to decide who comes in third, fourth, and fifth?” she said.

The fun / intensity / melodrama — however you prefer to see it — of this competition is that it’s the biggest in the area, and one in which all of the top couples compete. Many see it as a forecast of what’s going to happen — who’s going to take tops — at Nationals in Florida, coming up in September.

No surprises in International-Style.

Andrei Gavriline and Elena Kruychkova won in International Latin.

And the always glorious Jonathan Wilkins and Katusha Demidova in Standard. My favorite Standard couple has long been Victor Fung and Anna Mikhed, below.


But, actually, the more I see of Jonathan and Katusha, the more I hear Jonathan lecture on the art of Ballroom dance at Blackpool and the way his love of the sport / art really shines through, and the more I really watch them closely and realize their technical brilliance, the more he really is growing on me. I think sometimes, Englishmen can seem distant and aloof at first. But he really does seem to appreciate his fans and the applause they get, weaker than that received by Victor and Anna. And his dimpled Ralph Fiennes smile is starting to be a familiar staple of my whole ballroom experience, an essential part of that world that just whisks me away whenever I go to these big competitions. And the more I see them dance, I do see why, though Victor and Anna are the king and queen of charm, the more I understand why Jonathan and Katusha are number one in the country for several years in a row now and practically number one in the world. Some of the things they do, while not so flashy, are very difficult. I love it when he takes her out to the center of the floor during Waltz and they’ll do reverse turns for over a minute. Those are not only absolutely beautiful, but so hard to sustain that momentum and maintain that precise footwork for so long — far longer than the other couples — without getting dizzy, especially for the woman since you really have no way of spotting, and you’re just turning and turning and turning.

Okay, Latin, the other melodrama, this one never-ending:

Above is the eternally second-place couple, Max Kozhnevnikov and the absolutely divine Yulia Zagorouychenko, by far the crowd favorite, which, believe me, becomes all too obvious with the loud, rather nasty boos of disappointment when Max and Yulia are called runners-up. I always feel sorry for Andrei and Elena when that happens, because the crowd is booing, by extension, their winning. Funny thing is: while the U.S. judges continuously mark Andrei and Elena number one, the World judges repeatedly place Max and Yulia well above Andrei and Elena. In fact, Max and Yulia made finals at Blackpool this year. The U.S. judges insist Andrei and Elena’s technique is perfect and will say no more. But the World judges insist otherwise, showing, excuse me, but how full of absolute dog crap ballroom judges can be.

Anyway, for me, my ideal partership (of the American couples anyway) would actually be Andrei with Yulia. I’ve honestly never seen anyone (of the Americans anyway) move the way Andrei does. He is a tall thin man who just flies across that floor seemingly at lightening speed, light as a feather, and his hips, legs, and feet just a blur. He used to give privates at my studio, and before I knew who he was, I saw him show a student a backwards three Cha chas– a very rudimentary, first-level step. I’d never seen anyone do a basic step like that. My heart dropped. I realized then good dancing is not about fancy steps, but about the way the basics are executed. I remember thinking, wow, this guy should compete. Stupid. Then, I saw him on the cover of Dancesport mag and realized, dur, he’s the national champion. My problem with his partnership with Elena (his wife) is that, a former gynmast, she’s so teeny tiny; he must be nearly a foot taller. Not only do they look a bit odd together, but sometimes it throws them off. Last year at the Ohio Star Ball (aka: “America’s Ballroom Challenge” in its televised incarnation), they lost a normally easily-maintained connection, likely because his arm was just too high to hold her properly.

And Yulia! Yulia Zagorouychenko is probably my favorite of all female Latin dancers, excepting Karina Smirnoff who (also now a mainstay on DWTS), hasn’t competed in a while. Not to sound silly, but to me, Yulia is like the Alessandra Ferri of Latin — she’s a true artist. She moves in wholly unique ways, creating shapes with her body that are completely her own. She’ll go nearly on pointe in those open-toed sandals in Rumba, thrusting her hips foreward and rounding her shoulder blades so that she looks, cooly, like a cobra or something. I worry that she’s going to get serious bone spurs on her toes by the time she’s in her thirties with that on pointe on a hard-wood floor in open-toed shoes, but right now it looks absolutely gorgeous. I feel that sometimes Max, as much of a little cutie as he is, and as creative as he is with their choreography, just doesn’t really share her artistic brilliance.

So, it’s funny because, well, at one point on Saturday night, the two couples were dancing very closely to one another. I think the dance was Rhumba. I was focused on the couple right in front of me, another favorite, the breathtaking Delyan Terziev and Boriana Deltcheva, when all of a sudden the crowd began going wild. I looked further out onto the floor to see that Andrei and Max had exchanged partners– particularly cute, and demonstrating very good sportsmanship given the rivalry. Max went to dip Elena and she jumped up and wrapped both legs around his back. Lifts are strictly forbidden in non-showcase competition, but of course it was a moment of goofiness, and therefore, forgiven. Silly as she was trying to be, I was amazed at how good they actually looked together; their small bodies were a perfect match for each other. And then I looked at Andrei and Yulia — he was doing this crazy dip with her and it looked so amazingly stunning. Then she stood up and placed her arms around his neck. She’s a lot taller than Elena and they looked absolutely gorgeous together. Powerhouse couple that would be!

Anyway, here are some more highlights:


Delyan and Boriana, as I mentioned above, one of my favorites artistically. They’re a tall, thin, long-limbed couple and their Rhumba looks almost Balletic. She looks like an inky black spider!

They’re at the same level as my dear beloved Pasha and Anya (who didn’t compete, as they are a little busy with something else at the moment!!!), the two usually duke it out for fourth or fifth place — way too low for both couples. Strange how I always seem to champion the underdogs…

A Smooth couple I like, J.T. Damalas and Tomasz Mielnicki. They always dance with a lot of pizazz, and always do a very sexy foxtrot. I think they placed third. She makes her own dresses, and she usually comes up with something just bedazzling. How gorgeous is that color!!! (Sorry for all the zombie-looking eyes, by the way. I need a new camera!)

Matt and Karen Hauer, a sweet, newlywed Rhythm couple. They started off their Mambo routine very cutely: he took one look at her and broke into a series of small jumps, as if to say how wowed he was at her. She watched in amusement, then he grabbed her hand and they took off.

Another shot of Jose DeCamps and Joanna Zacharewicz in Rhythm. Jose really is a charmer.

Katusha’s little sister, Anna Demidova and her partner, Igor Mikushov, who placed first in Amateur Standard. They competed in Blackpool as well, and placed very high there too. Promising future those two.

The always lovely (and very photogenic) Anna Trebunskaya (if name sounds familiar, she too has danced with stars; that sports star Jerry Rice, to be exact). She has a new partner, Pasha Barsuk (oh no, another “Pasha and Anna”!!) and they did very well for a new partnership, placing 5th in Latin. Good for her 🙂

One last thing: the throng of spectators was absolutely huge, as you can kind of see here with onlookers anxiously awaiting Victor and Anna’s slowfox. Latin was about ten times worse than Standard though; you really could hardly move on Saturday night, and I’m sure the crowd standing, of necessity since there was nowhere else to go, around the exit, was a borderline fire hazzard. Blackpool was crazy packed this year too. Attendees at ballroom competitions used to consist mainly of friends and family (and the few students) of the competitors, a crowd that could easily fit at the several tables encircling the dance floor. But the more popular dancesport is becoming, the more of a spectator sport it really is. I think they’re going to need to find a new venue for some of those more popular competitions and put up some serious risers. At least for Latin…

Anyway, here are more photos in the album. It’s not finished yet, as I have yet to match some names with faces, and some names are horrifically misspelled, so please bear with me until the weekend when I have more time for fix-ups.