75th Blackpool DanceSport Festival: May 26th - June 2nd, 2000

"DEAR DIARY"...Adventures in Blackpool!

Sunday, May 28th, 2000

Sunday was a quiet day and many people attended the Pavilion with all the DanceSport vendors, as well as the Ballroom Dancers' Federation (BDF) Congress to listen to DanceSport lectures by top international coaches and stars. Guest speakers included Christopher Hawkins, Alan Fletcher, Kenny Welsh, Allan Tornsberg, Andrew Sinkinson, Espen Salzberg, Marcus Hilton, Bryan Watson, and Luca Baricchi. Topics included "Quintessential Quickstep", "Scintillating Samba", to "Formidable Foxtrot".

In the evening, North American competitors were invited to attend the North American Dinner at the Imperial Hotel which began at 8:00 pm. The event was sponsored by many event promoters, associations, clubs, studios, and individual patrons throughout Canada and the United States. The key coordinators were Colin and Joy Hillary, who along with their other volunteers worked hard to make the event a success. Colin and Hillary have a very interesting background -- as Australian Amateur Champions, they became professional and were very popular in doing shows. They soon ended up performing on cruises, and then Colin ultimately became a cruise director on a major cruise line for a number of years. Eventually, they immigrated to the United States and are now popular hosts and organizers of the Heritage Classic DanceSport Championships.

At the North American Dinner, there were over 233 people in attendance -- North American competitors were treated to a complimentary buffet/meal. In addition, during Blackpool week, competitors are able to practice in the Lancastria Room free of charge.

After dinner, speeches were made by representatives of the Canadian and American competitors -- Alain Doucet, current World Professional 10 Dance Champions was the first to speak and gave words of encouragement to competitors. He also took the opportunity to engage in some witty comments to and introduced his friend and fellow competitor, Gary McDonald, also a former World Professional 10 Dance Champion. Gary, not to be outdone by Alain, responded with a number of comebacks, but all in good fun. Continuing with the theme of Alain's earlier speech, he highlighted the growing number of North American participants at Blackpool, the US finalists from Friday's events, and encouraged everyone to "kick ass" (towards the end, Gary apologized to the audience for using "ass" five times throughout his speech, which resulted in the audience breaking out in laughter).

John Kimmons from the American Ballroom Company, Pat Nikleva and Pierre Allaire from the Canadian Dance Teachers Assocation (giving a bilingual presentation, Pat in English and Pierre in French. Pierre is another "hero" of ours, and he and his wife, Mireille Veilleux were former Canadian Professional Champions. Mireille unfortunately was unable to come to Blackpool this year as she was preparing for their event, Danse Sport Montreal), and Brian McDonald from the World Dance & DanceSport Council also gave wonderful speeches that highlighted the history of this initiative and the importance of bringing together North American competitors to support each other at the event. An announcement was made that Louis Van Amstel and Karyna Smirnoff were now officially representing the United States. The American team (Captain: Rufus Dustin, Modern/Standard: Jonathan Wilkins & Katusha Demidova; Igor & Irina Suvarov; Latin: Gary & Diana McDonald, Donald Johnson & Katrazina Kozak) were brought onto the floor and thanked for their participation and representation in the international team match.

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