Firstly, during the day we had the pro-am Latin divisions that were the best of the festival. Then at night, it was a stellar Open Amateur Event danced over 4 rounds.
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The incredible atmosphere in this ballroom, particularly during the Latin events, really spurred on the couples to give of their best!
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As we said above the pro-am Latin divisions were the best of the week. Here are the results:
Open A
1. Xu/Hustiuc 1,1,1,1,1; 2. Mazhar/Karpov 2,2,3,3,2; 3. Onischuk/Gunnarrson 3,5,2,2,3; 4. Pi/Stepanchuk 4,4,4,5,5; 5. Dorotov/Genkin 6,7,5,4,4; 6. Nazarov/Devitskaya 5,3,6,6,6; Qu/Kapitanchuk 7,6,7,7,7.
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1. Smith/Lifshitz 1,1,1,1,1; 2. Stanko/Malakhov 3,2,3,2,3; 3. Giordano/Danailov 4,4,2,3,2; 4. Fang/Tasarov 2,3,4,4,4; 5. Tarr/Genkin 5,5,5,6,5; 6. Biggs/Samarskyi 7,6,6,5,6; 7. Ninchi/Milot 7,6,6,5,6
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1. D'Angelo/Proskurin 2,1,1,1,1; 2. Bottini/Vukosavljevic 1,2,2,2,2; 3. Svyatets/Karpov 3,3,3,5,3; 4. Fujiwara/Samchynskyy 5,4,4,3,6; 5. Stefanini/Barov 4,5,5,4,4; 6. Petrayev/Kuznetsov 6,6,6,6,6.
Open S1
1. Shreibeer/Shumylo 1,1,1,2,2; 2. Magneten/Bertini 2,2,2,1,1; 3. Rossetti/Arietta 4,3,3,3,4T; 4. Tucker/Astafiev 3,4,6,4,3; 5. Chiu/Bager 5,5,4,5,4T; 6. Kazakevich/Gotchev 6,6,5,6,6.
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1. Fox/Danailov 1,1,1,1,1; 2. Knight/Shpakov 2,3,2,3,2; 3. Binder/Incatasciato 3,2,3,2,3; 4. Mullins/Wlodarski 6,6,4,4,4; 5. Sordoni/Arietta 5,4,5,5,5; 6. Porges/Katona 4,5,6,6,6; 7. Cheney/Astafiev 7,7,7,7,7.
A Rare Night!
Sometimes at dance competitions you get a night where everything comes together!
Last night at NYDF was just one of those nights! Everything went right! The dancers were on form, the audience was keen and the atmosphere sizzled! And we were done before 11PM. With only 3 majorly contested events plus a Cabaret division, the night was high energy from beginning to end.
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With 4,4,4,3,5, Artur Tarnavskyy & Anastasia Danilova maintained their high ranking to take an overall 4th place. They tied with the Polish couple for 4th in the jive, but lost out on the tiebreak. Closing the final and in a pretty tight race also were Francesco & Sabrina Bertini and Manuel Favilla & Natalia Maidiuk. Francesco & Sabrina got the nod for 5th place, scoring 5,6,6,5,3 to Manuel & Natalia’s 6,5,5,6,6. All in all, you couldn’t have asked for a better competition from start to finish! Congratulations to all the couples!
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For the pro-am competitors it was “Ballroom Day!” The Open Scholarships were not huge divisions, but the level of dancing was high.
There were only 3 contestants in the Open A and the easy winner was Natalie Rezai w/ Sergey Kiselev 1,1,1,1,1. 2nd in all was Ah Fong Li w/ Serhey Lazunkov and 3rd went to Jenn Mo w/ Karlis Treijs.
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The same lady won both the S1 and S2 categories and this was Linda Dillman w/ Igor Gayenko. In the S1 Linda scored 1,2,1,1,1. Winning that tango and placing 2nd in all other dances was Barbara Mierau-Klein w/ Gianni Caliandro. 3rd Fifi Wang w/ Andrey Klinchik 4,3,3,3,4; 4th Yumiko Yoshida w/ Aliaksei Peihanovich 5,5,4,4,3; 5th Laura Nagy w/ Aleksei Minaev 3,4,5,5,5; 6th Pei Lin Jiang w/ Slaveyko Baylov 6,7,6,6,6; 7th Ibis Wu w/ Serhey Averkov 7,6,7,7,7.
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Under 21’s Understand their Latin!
For us the highlight of the day yesterday here at NYDF was the U/21 Open Latin division.
This began as a semifinal and there were so many good young couples competing that it must have been extremely difficult for the judges to select their 6 finalists. Special mention must go to Bleykhman/Joly who had 40 recall marks (5 less than was needed).
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For the pro-ams it was a day of Smooth, ending with some good Open Scholarship divisions.
Sophia D’Angelo w/ Max Sinitsa was the winner of the Open C placing 1,2,1,1. Winning the tango and placing 2nd overall was Nichelle Kennedy w/ Aleks Nashev 2,1,2,2. 3rd Janice Gonzalez w/ Aleksandar Vukosalvejic 3,3,3,5; 4th Amy Brewer w/ Gunnar Sverrisson 4,4,4,3; 5th Scott Magnesen w/ Izabella Lewandowski 5,5,5,4; 6th Deborah Hoag w/ Peter Perzhu 6,6,6,6.
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In the Open B, Olivia Whiteside w/ Sergey Barsukov had perfect scores – 28 first places – to easily win the division. The Runner-up spot was decided by a Rule 11 tiebreak and went to Careen Friedland w/ Nick Cheremukhin 3,3,2,2 over Leanna Wenderoth w/ Kirill Gorjatsev 2,2,3,3. Lila Winiarsky w/ Vlad Astafiev was 4th in all dances. 5th Andrew Frame w/ Tatiana Seliverstova 6,5,5,5; 6th Qin He w/ Gherman Mustuc 5,6,6,6; 7th Jocasta Champion w/ Toby Monroe 7,7,7,7.
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NYDF 2022
Around the corner and down the block!
We’re all back in the heart of New York City for the 2022 New York Dance Festival, organized by Eugene Katsevman & Maria Manusova. The NYDF of 2020 was one of the last full competitions to run before the Covid lockdowns of that year. There was no NYDF in 2021 for the obvious reason. But we’re back baby! Although not everything is quite the same – the venue is the big change this year. For many years NYDF made its home at the iconic Roosevelt Hotel. Unfortunately this doyen of the hotel scene closed its doors during Covid and has not reopened. So Eugene & Maria moved around the corner to the Hilton Midtown for this year’s event.
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Yesterday the competition began utilizing 2 ballrooms – juniors in one and the pro-am Rhythm heats in the other. In the evening, the two groups swapped with the juniors moving into the larger ballroom for their scholarship events and the pro-ams into the smaller room for the nightclub divisions.
As we have come to expect at NYDF, the standard of dance is high. In the Pro-Am Open Rhythm Scholarships, there were some great competitors on display.
In the Open B there was quite a tussle for the winning slot, but it fell eventually to Kacey Warren w/ Jean Michele Erole 1,1,2,1,2. A new gentleman student (at least to us) took the runner-up position with 3,3,1,2,1, Michael Butler w/ Oxana Kashkina. Also in this mix was Lila Winiarski w/ Vlad Astafiev who scored 2,2,3,3,4. 4th and 5th positions were separated by a Rule 10 tiebreak. 4th Leanna Wenderoth w/ Kirill Gorjatsev 4,5,4,4,5 and 5th Jill Winters-Bougard w/ Grigol Kranz 5,4,5,5,3. 6th Jocasta Champion w/ Toby Monroe 6,6,6,6,6.
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Joan Goddard w/ Andrew Escolme won the Open S1. This was the largest of the Open Scholarships, beginning with a semifinal. Joan won all dances and had the majority of first places in all but rumba. The runner-up spot went to Scott Magnesen w/ Sabrina Bertini with 2,2,3,4,2. 3rd and 4th positions were separated by a Rule 11 tiebreak. 3rd went to Shao Rong Chen w/ Dmitry Nikishkin 4,4,2,3,3. 4th was Mimi Feliciano w/ Ivan Kudashev 3,3,4,2,4. 5th Debbie Clyne w/ Jeremy Gatlin 5,6,5,5,6; 6th Judith Spivey w/ Oleksii Zhylenko 6,5,6,6,5.
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The Junior Youth Scholarships in the evening were outstanding in both the Ballroom and Latin and there were certainly some upset results, especially in the Latin divisions. The following are some of the results.
J1 Ballroom
1. Kolmykov/Storchevaya 1,1,1,2,1; 2. Zakirzyanov/Snitko 2,2,2,1,2; 3. Zhukov/Cherkas 3,3,3,3,3; 4. Heyman/Kim 4,4,4,4,4; 5. Hubscher/Kozoubei 5,5,5,5,6; 6. Jenkins/Kublan 6,6,6,6,5.
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1. Zakirzyanov/Snitko 1,1,1,1,1; 2. Kolmykov/Storchevaya 2,2,2,2,2; 3. Zhukov/Cherkas 3,3,3,3,3; 4. Hubscher/Kozoubei 4,4,4,4,5; 5. Heyman/Kim 5,5,5,5,4; 6. Xu/Kuzmin 6,6,6,6,6.
J2 Ballroom
1. Novikov/Vishnevskiy 1,1,1,1,1; 2. Kolmykov/Storchevaya 2,2,2,2,2; Kolovyansky/Kolovyansky 3,3,3,3,3; 4. Zhukov/Cherkas 5,4,4,5,4; 5. Khelmer/Sherstnyova
4,5,5,4,5; 6. DeBellis/Baranovsky 6,6,6,6,6.
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1. Hayutt/Jgenti 1,1,1,1,1; 2. Novikov/Vishnevskiy 2,2,2,2,2; 3. Kolmykov/Storchevyaya 3,3,3,3,3; 4. Dorfman/Rakov 4,4,4,4,4; 5. Bulgakov/Gekker 5,5,5,5,5; 6. Boyko/Branova 6,6,6,6,6.
Youth Ballroom
1. Berenshteyn/Mugin 1,2,1,2,2; 2. Zaytsev/Bankova 2,1,2,3,1; 3. Bleykhmann/Joly 3,3,3,1,3; 4. Novikov/Vishnevskiy 4,4,4,4,4; 5. Zinger/Stolarsky 5,5,5,5,5; 6. Lennox/Baranova 6,6,6,6,6.
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1. Lennox/Baranova 1,1,1,1,1; 2. Bleykhman/Joly 3,5,2,2,2; 3. Ginzburg/Gray 4,2,3,3,3; 4. Zaytsev/Bankova 2,3,4,5,5; 5. Novikov/Vishnevskiy 5,4,5,4,4; 6. Ivanov/Akhromenko 6,6,6,6,6.