Hopefuls Parade 2010

The last two days of winter turned out tropical hot at the Palace of Sports in Kyiv as passions boiled with the finals of the 21st International Dancesport Competition “Hopefuls Parade 2010” nearing its end.

This is one of Ukraine’s most prestigious dance competitions and this time the jury boasted such names as Lindsey Hillier (UK), Stephen Hannah (Scotland), Gerd Weisenberg and Stefan Ossenkop (Germany), Serena Lecca (Italy), Alain Milette (Canada), Andrew Sinkinson and Hannes Emrich (UK), and Egor Vyshegorodtsev, Sergey Ryupin, and Vladislav Borodinov (Russia).

Unfortunately the audience was half empty because the Ukrainian public had shown little interest in such events of late. The show was really worth watching, with dancing pairs from Georgia, Moldova, Belarus, Canada, Germany, Poland, Romania, Russia, and Ukraine. The program included the IDSF World Cup, Ukraine’s formation team standings in Latin dance standing, and an open Foxtrot Cup competition sponsored by the Foxtrot company. All told, 887 pairs and 153 clubs in 49 cities across the world took part.

While the dancers were warming up, The Day interviewed people in the audience, among them Olha Donets, Ph.D. (Phthisiology), retired. Forty years ago she performed a dancesport number for the first time in her life. Now she was in the audience with her granddaughter.

Olha told us: “In the late 1960s no one knew the word dancesport. We had ballroom dancing instead, and it was popular and officially encouraged. Such competitions gathered thousands in the audience, although our costumes were far less sophisticated. Many dancers had to make them using their own resources. Of course, there were no such sophisticated hair styles. I was studying at a 10-grade school in Bila Tserkva at the time when a young fellow appeared and was introduced to us by the school principal as a ballroom dance instructor. Lots of students signed up for his training program. The training sessions were hard to endure — but it takes hard training to perform every pas with such graceful ease. Lots of boys eventually quit the program. I stayed, kept working hard, and finally found myself and my partner Ihor Konovalov in Kyiv as participants in the Ukrainian capital’s ballroom dancing competition. We were the youngest contestants, I was in fifth grade at the time — now I’m here with my granddaughter Polina. She is eight years old and she is also into dancesport.”

While we were talking nine pairs of the competition’s youngest contestants, roughly Polina’s age, appeared on stage in the Baby Nomination. They performed three dances: a slow waltz, cha-cha, and jive. Pair no.1 (Pasha Zhuravliov and Anastasia Lemeshko, both from Kyiv, who study dancesport at Kyiv’s center of the same name, under the able guidance of the noted coach Valentyna Fedorchuk) won the event.

“We’ve been training for almost two years. We love dancing. This is our fourth competition and we’ve always placed first,” the winning kids told The Day happily.

The young winners received gold medals, as well as teddy-bear-like toys. They also received Summer Invitations, on a par with the rest of the contestants, which will allow them to spend the summer holidays at the Treasure Island Aquapark in Kyrylivka by the Sea of Azov.

Artur Solomovych and Valeria Chernyshevska were the best in the Junior 1 Latin dance standing. They performed cha-cha, samba, rumba, pasadoble, and jive. This junior dancing pair came from Chernivtsi where they are coached by Bohdan Velykholova and Diana Grechana. Artur said he’d been into dancesport for six years and that Valeria had started at the age of three. They had been dancing as a pair for the past two years. This wasn’t their first visit to Kyiv. They had taken part in this competition last year. Artur and Valeria are resolved to keep dancing. Their plans include trips to Holland and Ireland this summer to vie in competitions in those countries.

Moscow’s Aleksandr Voskalchuk and Marina Alyoshina placed first in the “standard” major adult nomination (slow waltz, tango, slow foxtrot, Viennese waltz, quickstep) and in the Foxtrot Cup standing. This was Aleksandr’s third gold-winning trip to Kyiv. He danced with Marina on two previous occasions. When the music accompaniment suddenly stopped, theirs was the only pair to continue dancing and made a full circle before the tape started playing again.

“We kept dancing simply because we wanted to make it to the finale,” Aleksandr and Marina comment jokingly, “so we decided to keep dancing after the music stopped. We enjoyed taking part in that competition; we’re fond of this contest. We find the jury in Kyiv to be highly competent, so we’re keen on vying in this competition. We’ve each been dancing for 17 years, but only a year and a half as a pair. Back in Moscow we plan to combine training sessions and teaching young dancers.”

Says Vladislav Borodinov, member of the jury from Russia: “This time we had to evaluate very serious contestants, especially in the Latin American standing. There were also gifted amateurs. And, of course, dancing pairs of international acclaim. I believe that we have been fair in our judgment and that the tournament was a success. It’s rather cold outside, but the atmosphere within was quite warm and the competition took place within a friendly environment.”