This dance competition took place right across the street from where I live, so I had to go and check it out. Also this gave me a chance to check out Roseland Ballroom to which I have not been before. Thanks to Bill, into whom I bumped into when walking back home, for reminding me about the event.
This was a two-day event taking place on both Saturday and Sunday. Today they had amateur, pro-am and professional international Latin championships in both youth and adult categories as well as one round of professional American ballroom. It was so cute to see the pro-am youth division competitors like this. I was very impressed by the youth amateur division. They were so good, pretty much as good as the adult professionals!
Out of all competitors that evening the only one that I knew was Mica. I've known her for years but it was my first time to see her dance at a competition and wow, now I can see how good she is! I took a bunch of photos of her starting from this one. Unfortunately a bunch of photos in semifinals were taken at 640x480 resolution. Somehow I switched my camera to that mode by mistake. The final round was shot at 8 MP though. Click on the photo to see the rest of them.
Today NYU hosted their first ballroom social of the school year. It was a huge turn out - the biggest that I have ever seen at this event. My x-dance partner from many years ago Kathernie has progressed to much higher levels of ballroom dancing and was performing at the show. You can see her in the videos on the left.
Also my friend from Norway Caiila was in town and came to the social too. In addition being a great dancer she is a big yoga enthusiast. Check out her blog.
Leo Juashkovsky & Daniella Karagach, USA DanceSport Junior II Latin Champions and 10 Dance Runners-Up performing at the Annual National Ballroom Dance Week Social hosted by New York chapter of USA Dance. Leo is 14 and Daniella is 13 years old.
Just as last year, during the Labor Day weekend two big dance events took place at the Hilton Hotel on 6th Avenue and 54th street: New York Salsa Congress and New York Hustle Congress. One admission charge gets you to attend both. The Salsa Congress took place in the Grand Ballroom of the hotel pictured on the left. The Hustle congress took place in three separate rooms nearby. During the afternoon both congresses offered extensive dance workshops tought by top dance instructors. At night the Salsa Congress featured a stage show of salsa performers from around the United States and even other countries. After the show the humongous dancefloor was open until 5 AM for salsa dancing to a live band and a DJ. The Hustle Congress also continued until 5 AM and featured competitions of various levels from amatures to professionals as well as performances and of course there was plenty of dancing for the public.
Yet another street performance at Union Square today. This time there were a bunch of breakdancers. Most of them were dancing standing on their feet and moving their body in a robot-like fashion instead of doing a lot of spinning on the ground on their heads and hands. This is the type of breakdancing that I like. Back in Russia in the 80's we did it in school between classes. Watching this brought back the memories. Below are the video clips. The guy in red pants dancing in the first clip also performed at the Bellydance performance in Washington Square.
Today I went to the social organized by YCN section of NY chapter of USA Dance. Thanks to Diane for donating so much fruit for the party. Fruit salad is the perfect food for a dance social! There was a great turn out of people from local colleges who are members of their ballroom teams and clubs. For once, the dancefloor of a social at Dance New York was dominated by young people!
If you like to reading fiction as well as ballroom dancing, you'll probably love the novels written by Katherine Warwick. Check them out at her website http://ballroomdancenovels.com
During the Easter Parade a photographer from REUTERS took a bunch of pictures of Kerrie and I dancing. The photo that was submitted to various news agencies is below. Help me out and recommend it by clicking on the 5th star below RECOMMEND THIS PHOTO inscription! You must have a Yahoo ID to vote.
I have been maintaining the website dancenyc.info for almost two years. Boy, time flies! The purpose of the website is to have a comprehensive calendar of all partner dance events in the New York City and surrounding areas so that a quick trip to it could tell you what's going on on a given day. I implemnted my own calendar feature, but it was lacking an important features - recurring events support. I had to copy and paste the data for recurring events manually.
So instead of re-inventing the wheel and implementing my own recurring event support, I decided to use Yahoo Groups calendar feature. There is already an existing Yahoo Group devoted to the dance events in New York City and Long Island. It is called Social Dance Society. So I decided to link my well established and easy to remember domain name dancenyc.info to the weekly view of that Yahoo Group calendar. So going forward I will enter the events in that calendar and encourage others to do the same.
There are some advantages and disadvantages of this change.
Disadvantages
To view the calendar you to have a Yahoo ID. But obtaining the Yahoo ID is free and with it you get tonns of other userful services by Yahoo. I think everyone should have it!
The pages are no more cluttered with Yahoo ads and other features of the Yahoo Group
It is no longer possible to filter by dance style, attire and keyword. But you can still use the event search feature of Yahoo calendar.
Advantages
A powerfull recurring events feature of Yahoo Calendar can now be used. No longer you need to repeatedly enter recurring events.
Because of the recurring events support the calendar will be more complete.
Yahoo Group has existing user base so more people will use the calendar.
Well the size of this blog entry has exceeded the maximum allowed by the Fotki blog feature, so I created a separate blog dedicated to Dancing With The Stars. The blog has a separate entry for each eposode so you can leave comments just for that episode.
Please update your bookmarks with the URL of the blog:
dwts.info
Make sure you stay tuned after tonight's Dancing With The Stars episode for the ABC Primetime special on Ballroom Dancing at 10 PM EST. Quote from ABC website:
Put on your dancing shoes for this week's "Primetime," which takes you inside the ballroom dancing phenomenon. We'll travel to Buenos Aires, Argentina, the home of the tango; to the New York city public schools that inspired the documentary, "Mad Hot Ballroom"; and to a working-class English town, where dancing has become a passion for many people.
Check out the video of Natalie Gomes and Yuval Hod performing at the 2004 World Swing & Shag Dance Championship. Quite impressive how they combined acrobatics with some smooth dancing which blends very well with the music!
The place was packed. The main dancefloor had barely enough room to move. People were dancing on the balconies which had more room, but it was much warmer up there.
They had a mini dance contest where they picked first and second place winners. This couple go the first place. The winners received something in a gift bag.
There was also a dance performance of something resembling Charlie Chaplin by Paolo Lanna and Evita Arce. Here is the video:
