Sunday, November 22, 2009

Ohio Star Ball

It is disappointing to note that the Ohio Star Ball, which has been televised by PBS Boston for many, many years, was not recorded this year. Therefore the 2009 event will not be seen on your PBS station next year. Funding was the problem, which is understandable during these economic times. Also note that the Hawai‘i Star Ball also was not televised by ‘Ōlelo this year. So to see these types of world-class competitions you will have to be there.


Winners of the Professional Ballroom (Standard) this year at Ohio were the current World Champions (who performed at the Hawai‘i Star Ball in 2008) Arunas Bizokas and Katusha Demidova, 2nd were Igor Litvinov and Julia Ivleva, and 3rd Urs Geisenhaimer and Agnes Kazmierczak. Igor Litvinov danced with his student at the Hawai‘i Star Ball three years ago and Urs and Agnes performed at the Palladium for USADance several years ago.

Winners of the Professional Smooth were Tomas Mielnicki and JT Thomas who did the show for Hawai‘i Star Ball this year.

In the Professional Latin Division Delyan Terziev and Borianna Deltcheva, who performed at the Hawai‘i Star Ball in 2008 were the expected winners because their two main rivals Riccardo Cocchi and Yulia Zagoruychenko, Eugene Katsevman and Maria Manusova this past weekend were representing the USA at the World’s Latin Championship in Blackpool. However they must have been very disappointed to be placed second being beaten by Roman Kutsky and Anna Kovalova. Into third place were Thomas and Isabella Landowski (this couple also performed at the Palladium a couple of years ago for USADance). On an interesting note none of these three couples received a majority of 1st places from the 19 judges. In order to win a dance they must have a majority (10) of 1sts. The winners actually won on 1st and 2nd places from the 19 judges!

The final event was the “America’s Best” competition. All four Champions from the International Ballroom and Latin and American Smooth and Rhythm compete against each other for this title. Winners were Arunas Bizokas and Katusha Demidova (Ballroom), 2nd were Tomas Mielnicki and JT Thomas (Smooth), 3rd were Roman Kutsky and Anna Kovalova (Latin) and 4th were Jose DeCamp and Joanna Zacharewics (Rhythm).

The “America’s Best” title was created by PBS in order to compete against TV reality programs such as “Dancing with the Star” or “So You Think You Can Dance”

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