Tag: Franco Formica

Posted on

SURPRISE SURPRISE … NOT

 

Joanna Leunis and Michael Malitowski won the Latin Pro Championship tonight at Blackpool (for the second year in a row now). Riccardo Cocchi and Yulia Zagoruychenko came in second, Franco Formica and Oxana Lebedew in third, Sergey Surkov and Melia fourth, Maurizio Vescovo and Melinda Torokgyorgy fifth, Markus Homm and Ksenia Kasper sixth.

Am fairly pleased with the results I guess… though unsurprising of course. At least Michael and Joanna didn’t win across the board; Riccardo and Yulia placed first in Jive. I like Joanna and Michael and think they’re an excellent pair; I just don’t want the judges to make all others wait until they retire to advance.

 

Expecting a bit of commentary from Eleanor and Becca soon!

Update: Eleanor says:

“Last night was the best comp I have ever been to! Although the result is never gonna be what I want it to, there is something that made me very happy! Riccardo and Yulia placed 1st in the Jive! If I were to have my way then Maurizio wouldn’t be there but what can you do? The only other bad thing about the whole thing was that Riccardo and Yulia were in the same heat as Sergey and Melia so I usually had to choose between the two! Otherwise it was absolutely the best comp I have ever seen. Now I have to drag myself out of bed and hope I still have a voice. Xx Eleanor.”

[I personally like Maurizio though he can be a real ham 🙂 Not my favorite, but I am always very entertained by him. I haven’t seen him and Melinda dance in a while. And I don’t think I’ve ever seen Markus Homm and Ksenia Kasper?… Also, I wonder what happened to Peter and Kristina Stokkebroe? I guess that’s how Homm and Kasper got a place on the winners podium. Will be very interesting to see what happens next year when Slavik and Anna join the fracas!]

Posted on

BLACKPOOL DISPATCH #2: Team USA Wins the Team Comp and Sergey & Melia Are Married

(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!