Saturday 21st November
With river bridges crumbling in Cumbria, luckily my Dublin-Blackpool air bridge stayed intact. My twin-engine propeller plane survived a bumpy ride and thanks to a tailwind touched down after 35 minutes. Booked into the Imperial Hotel again. Going up in the lift ran into Karen Hilton who with Marcus won too many ballroom World Championships to count. Karen looked so young, beautiful and trim that I mistook her for a competitor until she put me right. Marcus has the same slim figure as when I saw him 15 years ago in Bournemouth.
Sunday 22nd November
Two DS forum posters very kindly said they were so encouraged by this thread six months ago that they were venturing out of their comfort zone to try out the Latin World Championship in Blackpool today. After 4.5 hours drive they arrived. At 12 noon we met up in the Tower Ballroom. Yes, Tower Ballroom is every bit as welcoming and romantic as seen in pictures, an olde worlde 100 x 100 foot dance floor surrounded by tables, ambiance enhanced by an even warm tone of lighting everywhere. A Sunday tea dance was in progress attended by locals dancing with evident pleasure and more apparent skill than in London. This centre of excellence appears to do wonders for the entire county.
Rendezvous with my forum friends was arranged in the best blind-date style, with mobile texts describing what I wore as I stood next to the organ. My two lady friends turned out to be warm-hearted and absolutely charming. We had a chat, overcame the shock of seeing posters in the flesh, then moved on to the Empress Ballroom in the Winter Gardens.
It was a festive start with 50 British pre-teens and teenagers performing a Michael Jackson tribute. There were many energetic yet convincing moves blending latin with modern dance, and yes there were moonwalks. The most interesting dancing was done by hands not feet. A straight row of teenage boys and girls wearing nonreflective black from head to toe stood in front of the platform. In the darkened auditorium a light beam was shone on this lineup below head level. In the dark the audience could see no bodies or limbs, just eloquent white gloves reflecting the light beam performing synchronised hand movements. Stage schools all over the UK would have been emptied to produce this lineup. The dancing hands were very well rehearsed indeed. So well synchronised that they could have semaphored a signal like “Man U beaten 4-3 at Old Trafford! Did you like Bruce’s gag last night?”.
Then came a dead ringer for an Olympic Games Opening Day Parade. 34 children each carrying a COUNTRY placard, entered the hall in style, leading either one or two dancers from said country onto the dance floor. They paraded once round the floor then lined up in the approved Olympic alphabetical order. When the UK team of two entered the cheer from the audience lifted the roof. Such panache in dance I have never seen before. Some guy in BDF has imagination in spades.
Altogether 55 couples represented 34 countries. Dance Britannia no longer rules the waves, but Blackpool can still rally the dance world like no other place. 11 judges were brought in from 11 countries, with Hazel Fletcher doing duty for UK. The judges stood like 9 statues spaced equally apart in front of and below the bandstand. Two more judges patrolled the remaining perimeter like soccer linesmen.
Round 1 saw 55 couples divided into 4 heats. Each heat contained 14 couples. Couples 1-14 would dance the cha cha then exit. Couples 15-28 would then walk on to dance the cha cha to a different tune played equally well by the respected Empress Orchestra. Then couples 29-42, then 43-55.
Couples 1-14 then came back to dance the samba, and so on repeated for rumba then paso then jive. Out of each set of 14 couples on the floor the judges were required to select 11 to go through to Round 2, with 3 couples eliminated.
By this process the first 4 rounds reduced the field from 55 to 43, 24, 12, then 6 for the Final. The judges now switched to ranking all 6 couples by merit and by dance. All marks from 11 judges were tallied. The highest scorer over the 5 dances would be crowned Latin World Champion 2009.
All seats in the Empress Ballroom were filled, with many standing behind the seats, not least the dancers progressively eliminated after each round. Upstairs the front rows were filled but there was space in other rows. I would estimate an audience of 2,500(?). After a quick look I estimated the woman/man ratio in the audience to be 70/30, but for some reason this ratio was 50/50 in the front row. Oh for a frontrow seat ! In all Empress Ballroom events influence and prestige comes from one’s dance CV. The number of front row seats is limited, with quite a few VIPS coming from all over the world.
I was offered either a second-row seat or a tiered fourth row seat with view above the heads of those in front. I accepted a fourth-row seat, for £30 (£60 for front row if you can get it). Once again this seat was in the wilderness area “behind the goalmouth” and I could only get a good view of contestants who deigned to dance there. Luckily this included Joanna Leunis and Micheal Malitowski. Whenever they showed any signs of coming anywhere near, our area erupted in cheers and applause. When Joanna danced the samba within touching distance, the entire area had a collective orgasm.
Joanna wore a black dress with shimmering gold sparklies. Michael wore a black shirt with matching gold sparklies with plunging neck line in Ian Waite style. Yulia wore a long all-black dress showing her beautiful back and waist, the left side slit revealing her long legs. The texture of the black dress looked somewhat like velvet. On the black dress were beautiful embroideries of silver foliage in exquisite taste. Riccardo wore a shirt with a very long jet black lapel co-ordinated with Yulia. This couple stood out in dance and dress sense, as always. Yulia does not shake the earth, but she is the one many take to heart, both men and women. I am not sure whether she is the goddess Aphrodite or Athena, but she is my goddess.
How on earth to describe three-dimensional moves on two-dimensional paper? One time in Chester Zoo I went up close behind the protection of a steel fence to make noise and try provoke a male lion a little distance away. This lion came straight for me. I ran for my life. A lion coming towards you in 3D somehow does not look like an MGM lion roaring on a flat screen.
Joanna can move three horizontal parts of her midsection independently. When I tried, all three parts moved as one. I swear she can move parts that doctors have not known about. Joanna’s musical timing is out of this world. When she dances right in front of you it is like an exploding supernova radiating pulses of energy and emotion.
The point of the spin?
Her superfast spin probably attracts the most attention, with some saying it is a circus move. Social dancers will never be able to experience what Joanna feels when spinning. With no participation perhaps there is no appreciation. However a furry tennis ball spinning in mid-air does concern a tennis player, and the spin of a golf ball with indented surface also changes its trajectory. The spinning electron does concern physicists, feeding through into the physics of waves, probability and uncertainty. Joanna’s spin turns so fast that she disappears in a blur, so this spin can hardly have been designed for aesthetic decoration. Last May Joanna herself spoke to us about her spin. In her soft voice she said, “I have to be committed, or I cannot do it.” Could this superfast spin be designed to portray the acceptance of uncertainty and complexity (as in tennis/golf ball and electron) and her commitment to change? The subject of change brings to mind what Bernard Shaw once said, that the law of change is the law of God.
About ten years ago Nicole once beat the very young Joanna, after which Joanna expressed great interest in Nicole’s superfast spin. Nicole would know.
FINAL RESULTS
#51 Michael Malitowski & Joanna Leunis (Poland)
#28 Riccardo Cocchi & Yulia Zagoruychenko (USA)
#7 Franco Formica & Oxana Lebedew (Germany)
#18 Marcus Homm & Ksenia Kasper (Germany)
#39 Andrej Skufca & Melinda Torokgyorgy (Slovenia)
#14 Eugene Katsevman & Maria Manusova (USA)
Compo marks:
http://www.scrutelle.info/results/es...2009/index.htm
(Youtube videos when they become available will be posted in this thread.)
FUTURE WORLD CHAMPIONSIP LOCATIONS:
20th NOV 2010 Bonn – Latin World Championship
19th NOV 2011 Bonn – Latin World Championship
18th NOV 2012 Blackpool – Ballroom World Championship
1st DEC 2012 Innsbruck – Latin World Championship
The six finalists, after each dancing 25 times within 4 hours, finished up in the same ranking order as before they began. With only Melia absent today (she is changing her country of representation) today’s new 1-2-3-4-5 ranking was the same as yesterday’s 1-2-3-5-6 ranking, i.e. no change despite the Battle of Nations. This outcome did not surprise those who follow competitions. Preservation of the status quo does not make it boring however. Christmas is no less thrilling despite arriving always on 25th December.
Monday 23rd November
At breakfast my DS chums pronounced themselves pleased with both the compo and their late night outing to Blackpool’s drag cabaret Funny Girl. They then went off on their 4.5 hour drive back to husband, children and office. I took off from Blackpool Airport for Dublin. Even for such a short hop the journey came to 6 hours door to door.
49 couples who came to compete were unsuccessful. Nobody was surprised -- nobody can beat Joanna until a young superstar emerges. Those who knew from the start they would lose were still thrilled to participate. They spent much more £££ than me to get here despite knowing what the competition outcome would be. Some would not reach home until this time tomorrow, in places like Australia, South Africa, China. Blackpool is for those who want to come -- a journey of love.
On 8th November Blackpool summer season ended and the illuminations were switched off. The Tower now opens on Wednesdays and weekends only. The heart of Blackpool has gone into winter hibernation.
In a dancer’s heart it is always summer.
. See if you can spot any future Latin World Champion:
, indeed beautiful pics 
