2012 United Kingdom Championships

Three of the Major Ballroom and Latin Events in the World are held in England. They are the Blackpool Dance Festival held in Blackpool in May, the International Championships held in London in November, and the United Kingdom Championships held in Bournemouth and London in January. These three Championships are all part of the recent “Freedom to Dance” campaign and are “open” to all Professional and Amateur dancers regardless of their affliliations.

A couple taking part as a competitor in any of the above events would be banned from competing in any event recognized by the World DanceSport Federation (WDSF) which was formerly known as the International DanceSport Federation (IDSF) which was formerly known as the International Council of Amateur Dancers (ICAD). This organization is following the impossible dream of making Ballroom and Latin American dancing a sport to include it into the Olympic Games! Ballroom and Latin American Dancing is an athletic and physically demanding art form as is Ballet, Jazz, Break Dancing, Hip Hop, Zumba, Salsa, Argentine Tango, Clog Dancing, Tap Dancing, Scottish and Irish Dancing but it is NOT a sport.

This past week the UK Championships were a great success with many couples ignoring the threat of being banned by competing for these prestigious titles.

Of note to the Pacific Region are the following results: -

2012 UK Open Professional Ballroom Championship:
2012 UK Championship Winners Arunas Bizokas & Katusha Demidova (New York, USA)
Third Place Victor Fung & Anastasia Muravyeva (California, USA)
The second place couple from Italy was the former Champion Mirko Gozzoli dancing with  Edita Daniute, who was the former Amateur partner of Arunas Bizokas.

Fourth place was Andrea Ghigiarelli & Sara Andracchio former Italian champions now dancing for England because of the banning by the WDSF!

2012 UK Open Professional Latin Championships:
From New York, USA  Riccardo Cocchi & Yulia Zagoruychenko took Second Place

From England the 2012 UK Championship Winners were Michael Malitowski & Joanna Leunis who have always represented Poland but have now taken up residence in England because of the banning situation.

Canada took Fifth place Maurizio Vescovo & Andra Vaidilaite
Third and Sixth place were couples from Russia

Fourth place was from Slovenia.

2012 UK Professional Rising Star Ballroom Competition:
Taking First Place was Artem Plakhotnyi & Inna Berlizyeva from Arizona USA
Into Second and Fourth Place were two couples from China: -

2.) Sheng Chen & Li Wanlan

4.) Shui Qing & Ma Yanyan

Into Fifth and Sixth Place were two couples from Japan: -

5.) Takahiro Niikura & Yukiko Nakata

6.) Shintaro Asamura & Emi Toyama

Third place was from Germany

2012 UK Professional Rising Star Latin Competition:
Yegor Novikov & Yana Petkov from California, USA took first place

Third Place from Florida, USA, Ivan Mulyavka & Loreta Kriksciukaityte
Second Place was from Ukraine

Fourth and Fifth Places were from China: -

4.) Li Wen & Huang Huan
5.) Lei Shi & Bai Yu Zhang

Sixth Place was from England.

2012 UK Open Amateur Ballroom Championship:
Making history was First Place couple Chao Tang & Yi Ling Tan from China, the first Amateur Chinese couple to win a major Championship.
Third Place was also from China Chong He & Jing Shan

Second, Fourth and Sixth couples were from Poland

Fifth Place were from Ukraine

2012 UK Open Amateur Latin Championship:
First Place England
Second Place Russia
Third Place Denmark
Fourth and Fifth Places Italy
Sixth Place Russia
 In 2011 Valentin Chmerkovskiy & Daria Chesnokova from New York, USA placed 3^rd in the UK Open Amateur Championships as well as 3^rd in Blackpool. Unfortunately, for the USA, they retired from competing because of the political banning by the WDSF and he wrote: -

“…..as a 24-year-old man I was told that I couldn’t compete against some of the best dancers in the world, because of reasons I had no power of influencing. The world I believed in, loved, and was willing to give up my last penny for was changing… and changing for the worse.
I was a 25-year-old man when I realized I was powerless. I held on to my love for dance to steer me through the lack of motivation, my disbelief in everything that was happening, and the sheer loneliness. I am so lucky that I got to witness the “Golden Years” of the 90s early 00’s, when dancers danced”