Tag: Sergey Surkov

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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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SO YOU THINK YOU CAN DANCE TOP 8: JANETTE, EVAN AND KAYLA SHINE

Sorry I’m late in posting again. Another problem with Godzilla last night — our run-ins are slowly coming to a head…

Anyway, one highlight to me last night was Mia Michaels echoing my love of Janette! She pronounced Janette “my favorite, favorite, favorite this season”! I of course love Janette too. There’s nothing she hasn’t been able to do. I don’t think she’s really received a single criticism yet on the show. Since this show honors versatility, at this point she is my favorite to win.

I also think though that Evan and Kayla are two of the best things to come out of this season. I honestly feel that the past two seasons generally have been duller than the first three, and sometimes I wonder what good this show really does for the dancers who appear on it. American Idol contestants go on to do huge things — acting in movies (and winning awards for their work), going on Broadway and becoming sensations, and of course becoming recording superstars — but I haven’t seen the dancers from this show reap those kinds of rewards. I do think with Evan and Kayla, Broadway could have found some new stars. I could see both of them up there on the Broadway stage, especially if, as Mia Michaels told Kayla, they can sing and act. I thought Kayla and Jasons’ Broadway routine was the hit of the night. The judges didn’t all agree with me and I think Nigel said they were “flat” but I thought it was fantastic. I thought Kayla in particular showed real star potential.

To me, Evan always shows that star potential. Another great Gene Kelly-ish solo from him last night. He reminds me so much of ABT’s Craig Salstein.

Continue reading “SO YOU THINK YOU CAN DANCE TOP 8: JANETTE, EVAN AND KAYLA SHINE”

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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!]

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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!

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BLACKPOOL DISPATCH #1: Congress Lectures Day 1

Eleanor writes:

“Just a little something about today for you. Best lectures [see post below for definition] were given by Max [Kozhevnikov] and Beata, and Sergey and Melia. Max spoke about how he gets his ideas for showdances and they performed their Charlie Chaplin number.

Sergey and Melia spoke about Rumba and did some gorgeous demos to different pieces of music showing the different interpretations. Then there was the Chrisanne one, which I featured in … am just thankful that 99.9% of the dance world don’t know who I am because I have a feeling the DVD is going to be embarrassing.

Also the World Exhibition champions, Greg and Natalie, gave a fab final lecture.

Just waiting for the team match to start now, Germany instead of Japan. US will win by miles in my opinion!

Eleanor x”

Thanks Eleanor!

So, I haven’t seen Max Kozhevnikov and Beata’s Charlie Chaplin dance, but looked it up on YouTube here. Look at that fancy footwork for Max! I seriously love Max in this! I didn’t know they were dancing together (and I think it’s only for showdances not for competition) but I like them together!

So sorry I missed Sergey and Melia’s lecture. I love Rumba, and I love theirs and would have savored seeing their different interpretations. I think I will try to buy the DVD this year if it’s not too expensive — also to see the Chrisanne show (which I’m sure won’t be embarrassing to anyone 🙂 )!

And so tonight is the team comp (see prior post for more info on that too). I guess the four teams are the UK, the US, Germany and Italy. The way the team match works is that each country’s two best couples in each dance style – -Standard and Latin (so four couples total) take turns dancing two rounds of each individual dance (Rumba, Cha Cha, etc., and same for Standard). The scores are then added together and the country with the highest scores win that dance. Then, the scores for all nine dances are added together and the country with the highest score overall wins. I agree that the US will probably win, since we have two of the top couples in the world in each dance style — Riccardo & Yulia in Latin and Katusha & Arunas in Standard, whereas none of the other countries have top dancers in both (just one or the other). Last year was the first year the US ever won, by the way. We’ll see.

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MISSING BLACKPOOL

The Blackpool Dance Festival has begun and for the first time in four years I’m missing it. So sad. I felt like I needed to save on expenses this year with the recession and all, and I was disappointed that my favorite, Slavik Kryklyvyy, likely wouldn’t be competing again, and I was aggravated with the predictability of last year’s results and figured I’m going to get frustrated all over again. So, I decided to take a year off.

But, thankfully, two wonderful young ladies from England, Eleanor and Becca, who I met from this blog, are going to do some little write-ups on the goings on later this week. They are fans of Sergey Surkov and Melia, so they’re rather perfect for this blog 🙂 In fact, today, they are modeling in the Chrisanne ballgown show in the pavilion, along with Melia!

(Here’s a picture I took in the past of the runway)

Chrisanne boutique in the pavilion.

I’ll also be keeping up via Dance Beat.

Today and tomorrow are the increasingly popular daytime Congress lectures on things like technique, performance quality dancing, and ballroom dance history by the top pros of today and yesterday, and tonight is the ridiculously exciting but somewhat goofy country team competition. The two most important nights of the week will be Wednesday and Friday, Wednesday being the Pro Latin and Friday the Pro Standard. I’ll be rooting for Sergey and Melia of course, along with the top U.S. couples Riccardo Cocchi and Yulia Zagoruychenko in Latin, Katusha Demidova and Arunas Bizokas in Standard.

Standard champion Mirko Gozzoli from Italy giving a Congress lecture,

after giving a demo of mouthwatering splended perfection with partner Alessia Betti.

Former champs the charmingly funny Luca Baricchi, with his partner Lorraine, doing the same.

American team’s elegant team comp intro from two years ago.

And last year’s. Still not sure where we were going with that what goes on in the teepee theme…

I’m excited though to be in NY for all of ballet season, for the first time in a long time this year. Between ABT and NYCB I don’t think I’ve missed a day of ballet in the past week.

But, still, it’s always nice to go away. Some of my favorite pics from the past:

(an unusually warm May day in the northern sea-side town)

Riccardo Cocchi rocking it out with his former partner, Joanne.

Karina Smirnoff when she last competed.

Sergey and Melia the first time I saw them dance and the first time they placed in the finals. Kind of funny, it looks a bit like he’s spanking her here 🙂

On the train ride from Manchester to  Blackpool. Sheep! I know, why do Americans always take such pictures? It’s like we don’t have any such animals here…

Curry dinner from Taka Dance’s Japanese restaurant, which they set up in the base of the Winter Garden for the duration of the festival.

Slavik with Elena Khvorova, last time I saw Slavik compete.

Max and Yulia’s advert page in the program the year they made the top six.

The nearby beach. Pretty but cold.

Cheesy, Vegas-y “Eiffel Tower” that houses a lot of casinos and pinball machines, along with pseudo-Vegas-type shows.

Day trip to Liverpool, in between Latin and Standard finals.

The always happening Ruskin Hotel where people like Maks Chmerkovskiy can often be found.

Arunas and Katusha in last year’s finals.

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AND CONGRATS TO ANNA DEMIDOVA!!!

 

 

(Above, a couple of pics of her and her partner, Igor Mikushov, I took at, it looks like, the Manhattan Dancesport Championships)

I’d gone to ABT last night and got home right before the DWTS winner was announced and so didn’t have to watch the whole show to see who won. I was so high on my night at ABT I’d totally forgotten about the DWTS pro results!

EEEEE, Anna! I’m so happy for her. I’ve long admired her, watching her dance at Blackpool and the US Nationals here and the other comps. And of course her sister is the reigning Queen of Standard. I actually hope this can bring greater recognition to Katusha Demidova and her partner Arunas Bizokas.

 

They are a contemporary Fred and Ginger. I’m not exaggerating one smidgeon. I’m not. I truly believe anyone who has the chance to see them dance will think the same. The only reason they’re not as famous is because those MGM movies aren’t around these days. Otherwise, they’d be stars.

I really thought everyone would go for a hot, sexy Latin dancer. (Not that I’d blame them if Slavik Kryklyvyy or Sergey Surkov was a contender!) But I’m beyond thrilled America went for elegance and romance and sophisticated, high-end glamour. Maybe there’s hope for ballet to make a mainstream comeback…

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WHO WOULD MAKE A BETTER MODEL THAN A DANCER?

 

I was in the bookstore the other day looking for literary magazines and somehow got caught up in the latest issue of Vogue Hommes International. I’ve been a fan of Keanu Reeves all the way back since River’s Edge (honestly) and I saw on the cover that there was an interview inside with Bret Easton Ellis (novelist, Less Than Zero, American Psycho, Glamorama, etc. etc.) Interview with BEE is pretty funny, actually, in a way it likely wasn’t intended to be. IE: interviewer: So, you were an icon in, like the 80’s. BEE: Yeah, it was hard being an icon. And confusing. Seriously. I’d get in a fight with my boyfriend and I’d be like, wait, you can’t criticize me; I’m an icon!” But my favorite BEE quote is here.

Anyway, I was flipping through and there are all these little mini interviews with and photos of writers (Stefan Merrill Block too!), architects, actors and filmmakers, of course designers and models.

 

 

 

But not a single dancer anywhere. Why not? They’d make such good models 🙂

 

 

(Sergey Surkov, my photo; Slavik Kryklyvyy from here)

 

 

 

(Arunas Bizokas, my photo; Linas Koreiva, from here and here)

Vogue Hommes should so hire me to compile a dancer spread! Fabrizio Ferri can do the pictures. Maybe Bruce Weber, though he can get kind of cliched and corny… No, Fabrizio.

Then, yesterday, I saw Valentino: The Last Emperor, which was pretty good. The Dolce Vita-esque scenes were the best 🙂  And it reminded me of Fashion Week’s being moved from Bryant Square to Lincoln Center, and I thought how excellent (and fitting of course) it would be to have NYCB and ABT ballerinas as the models, an idea Kristin Sloan had proposed on the Winger a while back. Ballerinas generally have far better bodies than models. Come on!

 

 

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U.K. Championship Results are In!

Results from the UK National Championships, held this week in Bournemouth (and one of the most prestigious in the world) are now up.

Sergey Surkov and Melia, Blackpool Congress 2008, photo Tonya Plank
Sergey Surkov and Melia, Blackpool Congress 2008, photo by Tonya Plank

Sergey and Melia take third in Latin!!! Woo hoo! They must have been so happy! And I’m so happy for them!

Slavik and Hanna didn’t do so hot though — they received a disappointing 6th place. Oh well, better next time.

Other placements were predictable:

Continue reading “U.K. Championship Results are In!”

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People are going to hate me for this…

People are going to hate me for this…

Originally uploaded by swan lake samba girl via mobile.


T-Mobile

On a scale of one to ten, Hanna is a ten, Slavik a 20000. In other words, no match. No match at all. I’m seriously depressed.

Update:Â Now that I’m home, I’m re-thinking this. I just think my expectations were so high for a Slavik and Hanna Karttunen partnership because I’ve found her so mesmerizing in her exhibitions. I just felt like her Latin wasn’t all there. Maybe she just had a bad night. Maybe she wasn’t feeling well. Or maybe good women just tend to suffocate under the weight of great male partners. But why? I think when a woman is dancing with a great man — one who’s both uber-charismatic and technically excellent with mind-boggling speed and precision of movement — she really needs to find herself, to bring out her artistry. We’re never going to be as good as the men in the athletic department, so we need to excel in other ways. I think I remember Melia saying something like that during her and Sergey’s Blackpool Congress lecture — she had to work hard to find her own “voice” to keep from getting lost under Sergey’s strength.

I just felt like even though she has great flexibility and has lovely extensions, etc., Hanna was really just all but invisible tonight.

On the other hand, Slavik! Slavik had people screaming. This girl next to me moaned loudly in ecstasy when he started to play with his suspenders, and she got so embarrassed her head practically ended up in my lap, but how much could I relate 😀 I realized this is actually the first time I’ve ever actually seen him perform live. I’ve only ever seen him compete before. He is a performer beyond any other I’ve ever seen — and I mean any — ballet (Marcelo Gomes, Angel Corella), modern, flamenco (Joaquin Cortes) — I mean everyone and every kind of dance included. It’s quite impossible to exaggerate the man’s performance ability.

And, among other things, I really don’t see how it’s humanly possible for anyone’s pelvis to move as fast as that man’s does…

And then, at one point he took the microphone and gave a little speech. Said he lived and worked in New York for a few years, back when he was competing for the United States (with Karina Smirnoff) — everyone cheered like nuts — and that New York and the U.S. in general occupied a special place in his heart, it’s “part of my soul.” A bunch of people went “ooooooh, aaaaawww,” and he looked out and smiled and said something that made people nearly fling themselves to the floor. I wish I could have heard what he said — his Russian accent is pretty strong.

Anyway, more thoughts on this later. It’s been a long day and I’m tired…

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Slavik Must Dance!

 

Yesterday I went to see a play about choreographer George Balanchine (which I’ll post about as soon as I have time; I have about 10,000 things to write about and that’s really not much of an exaggeration). My ballroom friend, Mika, came with me, which was wonderful because I hadn’t seen her in a while and needed to get caught up on all the ballroom gossip 🙂 She’s just returned from Internationals, held at Royal Albert Hall in London — so jealous; I really wanted to go to that this year. Anyway, we were chatting about the Latin results and she noted that Slavik Kryklyvyy (one of my two favorite Latin dancers; the other, Sergey Surkov, was unfortunately injured and couldn’t compete), was there watching but still didn’t compete with his newish partner, Hanna Karttunen. Word had it that he got cold feet; didn’t feel up to it. He did the same in May at Blackpool, though. He wandered through the crowd, watching, with a forlorn expression that nearly made me cry, live competitions and videos vendors were showing of past competitions that included him and Karina Smirnoff. Funny, my friend even saw him stretching at one point, before competitors were called onto the floor. As if he were competing. People kept coming up to him and asking for photos, asking him if he would be dancing, and he just kept repeating, “Not this year, sorry,” sounding sadder each time.

Last year when he and Elena Khvorova (who’s now dancing with Andrej Skufca — the couple placed third at Albert Hall — for people who are interested) were a new couple, he did the same thing. But that year, they came to US Nationals and tried out their new partnership in the open to the world category. So, I thought he and Hanna might do the same this year, but they didn’t.

I hope he gets up the nerve to compete soon because people, for one thing, MISS HIM (unless google analytics is lying to me, he’s consistently been the way most new readers have found this blog. And, to my knowledge he’s never been on any of the TV shows, so his fame comes just from his spectacular work on the ballroom floor) and, for another, are getting worried judges are going to start being dismissive, forgetting about him, making a comeback harder. And real-life ballroom judges, lord knows, unlike their TV counterparts, are completely immune from public opinion.

Anyway, happily, he doesn’t seem to have an issue with showdancing. Here‘s a video of him and Hanna — video quality is not the best, but if you know ballroom, and if you know him, you can tell they look in great form. Also, commenter Shim alerted me that they are to dance at Columbia University’s Big Apple Dancesport Challenge, on December 6th! I just hope that’s not restricted to Columbia students…

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Don’t Forget Fall For Dance

 

Just wanted to remind New Yorkers (and anyone traveling to NY in the near future) that Fall For Dance tickets go on sale this Sunday, 9/7, at 11 a.m. Tickets are $10 if you choose to stand in line at the City Center box office (which I don’t recommend), or $15 (with $5 surcharge) if you book online. Tickets sell out very quickly, usually within a day or two. Here’s the schedule and lineup of artists.

Also, this weekend is the Evening Stars series of free performances at Battery Park. Tonight is Lar Lubovitch Dance Company, tomorrow night Rasta Thomas’s Bad Boys of Dance, and Sunday night Los Vivancos flamenco group. All performances begin at 7:30 p.m. Go here for more info.

Outside of New York, this weekend is the United States National Dance Championships (most important Latin Ballroom event in the country) in Florida, which for the first time in a couple of years, I am not attending. Sad day. I will definitely keep my eyes peeled for results. I expect Riccardo Cocchi and Yulia Zagoruychenko to take tops in Latin, and Arunas Bizokas and Katusha Demidova in Standard but am always happy for a surprise. If anyone is there, please let me know what’s going on, and who all’s there for the World events! If I miss Slavik or Sergey I am not going to be happy.