Florida has always been a popular destination for ballroom dancers in USA. Iaroslav and I have traveled there for competitions, training and teaching multiple times throughout past years. During last couple of months Florida turned out to be a hub for ballroom dance lovers, since the restrictions were not as strong, some dance studios were open and events were able to be held.
This trip to Orlando was particularly exciting as we were looking forward to competing for the first time in more than 10 months! There is no doubt that pandemic has been psychologically difficult for many competitive dancers, including us. During the usual time our schedules are pretty hectic, we are so used to compete almost every weekend, traveling all over the world. So, naturally, we were out of our “comfort zone” without being able to do all that. For some time we felt like a big part of ourselves was missing. Events were cancelled one after another until we have finally had a possibly to go out on the dance floor again at South Open Championship. And we had a blast!
This time we prepared for you some videos from South Open 2020 where we were competing in professional division as well as Iaroslav competing with our Pro/Am Student Natasha, who did excellent and won competition in her category. Well done Natasha and here are some videos for you guys!
Iaroslav and Natasha dancing Waltz in the final round of Pro/Am Open Gold "C" division
GlamCam. Video by Dmitriy Nikolaev, Ballroom Back Stage
Interview. Video by Dmitriy Nikolaev, Ballroom Back Stage
Iaroslav and Liliia dancing Quickstep in the final round
We are so grateful to Sid Pocius for organizing South Open Championship in Orlando last weekend following all the regulations and safety measures. We must say, the ballroom was impressive! About 30000 sq.ft. room allowed space for social distancing and 5000 sq. ft. dance floor gave us so much freedom to dance and express ourselves. We missed competing so much and it was such a pleasure to finally be back on the floor.