Alex and Lisa

Another year has gone by and all the best dancers from the most remote Countries in the World made their way to the capital of Ballroom Dancing – Blackpool!. The festival started much earlier for Alex and Lisa this year as they were invited to particpate in the Invitation Professional Team Match. It involved four Countries – Great Britain, USA, ITaly and Japan. This unique event included 4 Top Couples(2 Standard and 2 Latin) for each Country.

It was a very close fought Competition and Great Britain finished runners up behind USA. Unfortunately not everything went smoothly for the Great Britain Team this year as a week before the event our 2nd British Latin Couple had to withdraw from the team match due to visa problems but we still managed to finish in 2nd Place.

On the sunday night, the cocktail party took place where all the teams performed a stint on the stage at the famous Tower Ballroom in front of the Adjudicators and many other VIP guests including the Major of Blackpool. The theme for Great Britain’s performance was a tribute to Queen – the famous rock band. With Paul Killick being Freddie Mercury, we lit the light fantastic which resulted in a standing ovation from the crowd. Certainly a night to remember!!!

The main Professional Latin event took place on Wednesday night which started with over 320 couples participating in the preliminary rounds. This event was judged over separate dances, Alex and Lisa finished in 13th place in Cha Cha, Samba and Paso Doble missing Semi Final by one mark(top 12). In Jive they made the Semi final round and finsihed in 8th Place (next into the final) which was a fantastic result. It was a great improvement from last years results and Alex and Lisa were very proud to be the top British couple of this event.

MOVE IT 2008 – The UKs Biggest Live Dance Event

British Dance is thriving with more people watching performances, taking classes and watching dance on tv more than ever before.
Depending on your personality whether you are looking for something funky, energetic, lyrical or classical, there is style of dance to suit everybody.

Both Alex and myself were delighted to be contacted by Move It Programme Manager Georgina Harper asking us to take part in this years exhibition.

When we decided to accept this invitation we did not realise how big an event it would be, apart from the massive stage in the main hall where the top UKs dancers performing
their hottest routines, there was also a huge exhibition centre for dance manufacturers to show their products and over 160 different dance classes taking place in 7 dedicated dance studios.

The duration of the festival was four days. It started on the Thursday with a fashion show which wasnt open for general public. This is where british and international dance manufactures could show their latest products. The rest of the weekend from Friday to Sunday was devoted to dancing itself. Literally thousands of youngsters with their parents or dance teachers were pouring out of the trains at the London Olimpia’s station to get to the opening of the doors for 10.30 in the morning.

Our involvment in the festival included 2 days: Saturday and Sunday. On Saturday we performed a Latin american Showcase which took place on the main Stage. This Show spot was presented by our dress sponsor DSI and alongside the very creative Vicky Barques ( DSI designer) we choreographed a showcase lasting 8 minutes.

The Idea of this Perfomance was to show an evolution from Juvenile Dancer through Youth up to Professional level. To help us to portray this we danced alongside British Juvenile Champions Luke Miller and Hannah Crestwell and Youth Latin Champions Danny Stowell and Kate Moore.

We all met up in our studio in Southampton and choreographed the Show. After the perfomance we were
sharing our emotions with each other and all agreed that this was quite a special feeling to dance on such a massive stage on your own in front of a live audience of around five thousand people.

On Sunday morning we were back tat the Olimpia Arena. This time Alex was due to lecture at one of the worksops. Unfortunatelly I could not partner Alex on this ocassion, due to previous committments( British Dance Council) representing British Competitiors Association. But luckilly Linda Bellinger( Lisa’s mum) was able to help Alex in his lecture to demonstrate and teach participants. And just as well there were two of them as when they approached their dance studio allocated for their latin class, there were about 80 people, all of different ages and dance orientation queing up to take part in the class.

What a compliment it was for Alex and Linda and for Latin-American Dancig that so many people were keen to learn it!!! The dance chosen for the workshop was Cha-cha and all the participants seemed to really enjoy the dance routine. Following Alex’s lecture was a workshop by Strictly Come Dancing Professionals Ian Waite and Camilla Dallerup, it only shows how popular Ballroom and Latin American has become over the past few years.
The whole event was coming to an end. After final meetings with Dancewear companies and talks to colleagues and friends in the business we made our way back to Southampton.

We wish all the luck to the organisers of this event and look forward to participating in the future years!!!

After having a little break from trips to Asia, we were delighted and looking forward to attending the opening of Summer Mansion Grand Hall Calebrations in Bangkok. We accepted this trip over a year ago at the UKA Congress in Blackpool when the orgaqniser of the event Mr Somchai was charmed by Lisa’s dancing and her lecture and asked us if we would come and demonstrate for him for the opening of his new Dance Ballroom. Unfortunately due to the sudden death of his father Alex was not at the lecture sodid not get the opportunity to meet Mr Somchai in England previously.

The trip was made even more enjoyable when we realised that we would be in the company of Mr Paul Beeton, Mr David Roberts (president of UKA), Graham Cookes and Miss Sue Walker. You can almost guarantee a laugh a minute when you are with David!! Sometimes we wonder where he gets all his enthusiam for all the jokes…. you can just imagine what the jokes were like!!

We finally arrived in Bangkok and after long clearance from passport control, we were very honoured to be met by Mr Somchai himself. They took us straight to the Summer Mansion which is a building right in the centre of Bangkok owned by Mr Somchai. He is quite an amazing man and here is a little story on how he got involved into dancing:

His adventure in to dancing started in 1993 when he was invited to a Dinner Dance and absolutely fell in love with Ballroom and Latin Dancing. It became his favourite hobby. AFter visiting England and watcing the Open British Championships in Blackpool, his ambition grew more to dance and started studying and practicing his own dancing much more… He eventually completed his studies and examinations of dancing techniques with the UKA and became an International adjudicator for the World Dance Council.

The celebration of this event lasted over 3 days. The first evening we were all invited to a Welcoming dinner dance. Alongside the beautifully served food, we were entertained by a live band which enabled all local dance couples to get up and have a jig around. The second evening was the main celebration featuring cabarets by ourselves and our Italian colleagues. Fortunately we had the whole day to ourselves to do a little bit of sightseeing of Bangkok which we were looking forward to immensly especially when we found out that David and the rest of the “gang” would be joining us for the tour of Bangkok. As not only is David got a great knowledge of Asian Countries but also he is great fun to be around. So we started our day with a trip on a James Bond boat at the local river eventually going in to the “canal system of Bangkok.” That made a great impact on us as seeing what conditions people live in and on the hand seeing beautiful Buddha temples. By midday we were all exhausted and tired so we decided to make our way back to the Summer Mansion and prepare for the evening.

Eventually we got the the main party which was the whole point of our visit to do a cabaret and even there we could not go without surprises. Unfortunately the man whom was in charge of music could not quite understand all the details which were explained to him by an interpreter so ourselves and the Italians ahd to improvise on the spot to cope with the slight technical fault. But we got there in the end and both couples had a standing ovation from the audience.

Finally our trip was coming to the end, during the last day of our stay in Thailand we assisted Mr Paul Beeton in his 2 hour lecture on Cha cha, Samba and Paso.

But it was not the end of attractions we had one more evening to go and again we could not go withoug surprises there. We both have visited a lot of places around the world and have seen a lot of wonders but this waws something special. The main cabaret for the 3rd day of celebration was a show by a group of ‘Ladyboys’ whom are very famous in Thailand. Both Lisa and I and the whole crowd of British guests were absolutely gob smacked as we have never seen anything like this before, but this was not the end of it. The song ‘Cant take my eyes off of you’ came on and one of the Ladyboys dragged Alex on to the dance floor to be his/her dance partner! By this time we were all under the table laughing our heads off. Alex definately played up the part thats all we are saying about it. The evening finished, our bags packed, it seemed impossible but it was time to catch our flight home. Before we reached the airport we all stopped off at the famous night market so everybody had the last chance to pick up some souvenirs from their trip.

This was the end of another successful trip to Asia. Many thanks should go to Mr Somchai for making the weekend possible and to Mr David Roberts for giving us a chance tot meet such a great guy as Mr Somchai. This trip was special in our hearts as not only did we do our work but we had the oppotunity to see some local sites and to explore Thai culture….