WORLD PROFESSIONAL
SOUTH-AMERICAN SHOWDANC

Reported by Bryan Allen & Ann Baker.

The setting for the 2007 WDC World Professional South-American Showdance Championship was the luxury five star Steigenberger Kurhaus in Scheveningen , Holland, and it would be difficult to find better. Both quality , facilities and ambience are all present making it all very welcome for competitors, officials, guests and audience. It is also a good venue for the televising of such events.

The competition started with an afternoon session , the first two rounds tacking place before a full house audience, enjoying both the very entertaining dancing and an elegant High Tea, shades of times past!

The Welcome Address from the Burgermeester of Den Haag ,Wim Deetman, stated that the Hague truly deserves to be named "the dance city of the Netherlands." because of the numerous important dance events held there in recent years.

The organisation was under the control of David and Jacqueline Simon and Cor and Janny van de Stroet. Gideon and Daniel Simon took care of everything off-floor and in particular Gideon Simon liased with the television production team from RTL Television. There was sponsorship and other assistance from the City of The Hague, Swinging World Holland, and the Dutch organisation, NVD/VBD.

For the afternoon rounds the audience of over five hundred were severed full afternoon tea?a real tea dance situation! The evening, with the same capacity audience, enjoyed an excellent six course dinner, served unobtrusively by the very efficient staff. An international panel of Adjudicators had been selected to assess the merits and quality of the twenty-eight couples from eighteen nations.

The semi-final saw fifteen couples selected with France, USA, Great Britain, Switzerland, Japan, Russia, South Africa, and the Netherlands couples falling just short. The final was very interesting and full of stark contrast. A problem for the judges to sort out but they did so with the following results.

Andrei & Natalie Paramanov Canada
Were winners of the title. Their show dance was a performance to the music "Autumn Leaves" and was a Rumba danced with simplicity, tenderness and great emotional feeling. Our worry was, would the judges accept this one dance performance as enough of a show. But they did! The results were announced in reverse order and when the names of the runners-up were called, realising that they were the World Champions Andrei fell to the floor, arms wrapped around Natalie's legs and, if not mistaken there were tears. This emotional display matched their dance performance and we, and seemingly the hole audience shared their emotion. If beautiful dancing was what you wanted to see? this was it.

Andrey Bouchik & Valeria Bousheva Russia were the runners-up and might have hoped to win for they were placed second last time. Their choice of music and dance content, featuring an Outer Space theme did little to add to their talented dancing. It was a committed and strong performance but it was difficult to ?get the message?.

Roman Myrkin & Natalie Biedniagina Ukraine third, danced a very nice show, ethereal and artistic with a great opening sequence. The dancing often showed a strong ballet influence and perhaps was not "Latin" enough for some.

The remaining finalists, placed fourth to seventh, were Peter Majzelj & Maja Gersak Slovenia Andriy Dykyy & Iryna Zhebrak Ukraine Delyan Terziev & Boriana Deltcheva USA Koen Brouwers & Roemjana de Haan Netherlands

As a final overview there seems to be an element of doubt about the content required for this event that is not present for the Classical, or Ballroom style Showdance. Many of the offerings had little of what we expect from a competition which, we assume should be largely focused on Latin American dances. Perhaps I am wrong?