Right now we are on the airplane on the way home from the 2018 Professional 10-Dance World Championships here in Minsk… and what a tough trip it has been! Can we just say… it’s really hard to get to Minsk! But we were so excited to be here, as one of the selected couples to represent the United States at the World Championships, this year. It’s such an honor to be one of the selected representatives, and we are proud to represent!
Hey guys, I have some juicy inside gossip in this post, but in case you’d prefer to watch a video of our trip to Minsk, you can do that right here!
The Long Road to Minsk
The Disaster of 2017
In 2017, we unfortunately did not have a World Championships. The reasons are ambiguous and, bluntly put, “shady”. But it can be boiled down to a simple point of fact. All World Championship events are bid upon by individual competition organizers from around the world. If there are multiple organizers who want to run the event, they present their bids at an annual meeting held in Blackpool, England, at the world’s most prestigious event, the Open British Championships. There, the countries vote on which bid wins, and that sets up the date and location of the championships.
The catch? The competition organizers are financially responsible for putting on the event. That means hall rental and all associated costs. That’s not so bad when you consider that most times, the championships are taking place during an event that already exists. But the organizers must provide a second panel of judges specifically for the World Championship event, which means they must pay for every judge’s food, airfare, and hotel. They must also provide for the officials coming to officiate the event. In addition to this, the organizers must provide hotel and food for all selected competitors, plus prize money for the top 12 places in addition to the prize money already provided for all other events taking place at the competition.
These costs can easily add up to dozens of thousands of dollars that organizers are rarely able to recoup. The result of this system is that we, the competitors, are at the mercy of some organizer’s good heart and their ability to find sponsorship for the event. And for the main championships, the Professional Latin and Professional Standard, this never seems to be a problem. Unfortunately, us 10-Dancers seem to be an afterthought in our industry.
So last year, we were forced to sit at home and forgo a year of competing. Even at the start of this year, there was no World Championships scheduled for us. It wasn’t until the meeting in Blackpool this June that an organizer stepped forward and agreed to hold the championships.
A Bittersweet Victory
All of the officials I spoke to kept asking me why I didn’t feel more relieved. Why wasn’t I happy that a championships was actually happening this year?
Well, for starters, I was happy. I am happy! And relieved. But the feeling is short-lived. It worked out for us this time. However, the underlying issues of why we did not have a World Championships in 2017 has not been addressed. More and more now, competitions are being run and approached like a business. I don’t have a problem with that in principle. But what it means is that decisions are made based on expenses and cost recuperation. The organizing powers of the industry have not caught up to that way of thinking yet. So while organizers are being asked to hold championships for couples and sink thousands of dollars with no chance of recuperation, the competitors will bear the unfortunate consequences.
Getting to Minsk
The 2018 Professional 10-Dance World Championships was held this year in Minsk, the capital of Belarus. We were very excited for the opportunity to see a new city. When I was little, one of my main motivations for training so hard was so I could use my dancing the see the world. Every chance I get to go to a new city fills me with so much excitement! Ok ok, it’s Minsk in October. But that’s fine with me! It’s kind of boring to see every place in summer, anyway.
The trip to Minsk was loooooooooong….. I mean really really long. The Monday and Tuesday before we left, we cancelled lessons so we could do double practices and get extra rest. We woke up at 6am each morning and started practice by 9am. First we practiced Latin, took a break, then got back on the floor for Standard. We were back home by 5pm. While Simeon prepared dinner, I worked on rhinestoning my new Standard gown and his new Latin shirt. I continued to rhinestone until 10pm, only taking a break to eat.
Luckily, I finished everything by Tuesday night. I even packed most of my bags! All we had to do Wednesday morning was close up the suitcases, say goodbye to Casper, and hop on the plane!
Just a quick reminder, if you want to watch the video of our trip to Minsk, you can do that here!
A Slight Panic
Upon arriving at Sea-Tac Airport, we realized our bags were not checked all the way through to Minsk! In fact, we needed to pick up our luggage in JFK, during our first stop in New York City, technically leave the airport, go back around to Ukraine International Airlines check-in desk, check back in, and go through security again. And we only had a 2 hour layover!
First we asked the lady at the Seattle check-in counter if she could do anything for us, which she said she could not. Then we called the website through which we made the reservation. It was called “Go To Gate”. Essentially the issue was: although the ticket we purchased looked like one reservation on “Go To Gate”, it was actually 2 separate reservations. Of course, we didn’t know this when we bought the ticket. So if there was any delay with the flight arriving at JFK, or our bags took too long to come out, and we missed the baggage cutoff for our flight from New York to Kiev, the Ukrainian airlines would mark us as a no-show and force us to buy a completely new ticket at our own expense. And although “Go To Gate” offers a connection guarantee, there’s no telling that they would honor this guarantee since, technically, we would have missed the JFK-Kiev flight because of the luggage cutoff. Can you say… big mess?
And there was literally nothing we could do except pray we got to JFK in time.
JFK-Kiev
We made it. In fact, the JFK flight landed 20 minutes early, and our luggage came out quickly. In fact, we were checked back in and through security in enough time to grab a burger before boarding our flight to Kiev. As we were standing in line to board the plane, we ran into another couple from the USA! They are from Florida and were obviously on the same JFK-Kiev-Minsk itinerary as us.
By the way, if you ever sit Economy on a UIA (Ukraine International Airlines) flight, then you will really understand what it feels like to be crammed in like sardines. I’m a small person. Really, I’m petite. And my knees were touching the back of the chair in front of me. The seat was so uncomfortable, by the end of the 8 hour flight, my tailbone was balancing on some hard metal piece. My only consolation was my big puffy marshmallow coat, which I brought with me. I wrapped it around my neck and made a very comfy neck pillow for myself. I slept most of the flight.
When we landed in Kiev, we discovered, to our dismay, that our flight to Minsk was delayed by 4 hours! And we already had a 3 hour layover! So we found a comfortable restaurant near our gate and settled in for our 7 hour wait.
Exploring Minsk
When we finally got to Minsk, we went straight to our hotel room and snuggled down into bed. It was 3:00am before we finally turned out the light, and our plan was to sleep without an alarm so we could fully recover from the stresses of 26 hours of travel.
We woke up at about noon the next day, so we got ourselves ready and headed out the door to explore Minsk. First stop, getting some coffee and a quick pastry! Then we spent the next few hours walking around and exploring the city. Parts of Minsk were definitely surreal. We were exploring on a Friday during the afternoon and the city seemed close to deserted!
Minsk looked very much like many other Soviet cities. We’ve been to Moscow, and of course Sofia many times. Soviet cities have a certain style of streets and buildings. Parts of Minsk reminded us of Sofia, except the streets in Minsk were so wide! A river splits the city in two. Willow trees line the riverbanks and gaze at their reflections in the water.
Like many Soviet cities, huge parks covered the landscape of Minsk. Being in the city in October was a great experience. We were lucky to have clear blue skies and sun, which made the golden leaves on the trees sparkle in the afternoon sunlight. I was struck by how beautiful Minsk was! I definitely wasn’t expecting Minsk to be such a gorgeous city.
After the competition, three other couples from America/Canada joined us on a guided walking tour of the city. We saw the Old Town, as well as the Soviet-built Opera House/Ballet Theater. We strolled through the parks and marveled at the lack of old buildings in the city, which we learned was a result of extensive German bombing from WWII. We sought out a brewhouse to try Belarussian beer and found gelato in Minsk’s massive shopping mall. The city and surrounding countryside is flat as a pancake, but the fall foliage and weather was amazing. I never expected to enjoy Minsk as much as I did.
The Competition
Saturday morning, I was up by 6am to start getting myself ready for the competition. The hotel provided breakfast and we needed to be entirely ready by 11am for the shuttle to take us to the competition venue. The breakfast the morning of the competition is always fun. You head downstairs and see all of your competitors in the dining room. Everyone is messy, wearing sweats with their hair all crazy. Squinty-eyed, makeup free, and invariable wishing we got to sleep an extra three hours, it’s completely different from how we usually see each other. But somehow, that makes the experience even more fun.
World Championships Organization
The organization of the competition was terrible. All of us were left with the feeling that the organizer simply did not care about the couples or the championships itself. He cared about his son, who was competing in the championships.
First of all, none of us were given an actual schedule of events. We were told to be ready to dance the first round at some point between 1:00 and 4:00. So we warmed up and changed and, by 1:00, stood by the edge of the floor ready to dance. Then, we waited. And waited. Our warning was the announcer saying, “Dear couples, please wait and you will soon dance.” We thought this meant to wait. Instead, it meant be ready to go! Because about 30 seconds after that, the announcer called the first heat onto the floor. It took us a bit by surprise.
For the second round, we were told to be ready to dance by 4:00. By 4:00 sharp, we and our competitors stood at the edge of the floor ready to go. Then the announcer called out a different event. We stood back and let those competitors go, then returned to the edge of the floor. 10 minutes later, the announcer called out a completely different event. This continued for over an hour. And once the semi-final began, there was a delay between dances when the judges’ electronic judging tablets crashed. Someone had to hand-draw a judging grid on individual pieces of paper for the judges to use. This resulted in a 25 minutes delay in between the Samba and Rumba.
Most of us ate breakfast at 8:00 in the morning. We were at the venue by 11:00am. The competition finished at about 9:30pm, and the organizer provided dinner for us at 10:00pm. At no point in between did the organizer provide any food for us. Not even basic snacks like bananas or granola bars. And because we were never provided with a schedule of events, we never had any time to run out to a café and pick something up. The lack of a provided schedule meant we were on standby for nine hours straight.
Even water was not provided for. The organizer placed bottles of water on a table. By halfway through the semi-final, the bottles were gone, and never replenished. The semi-final was at 5:30. The competition finished at 9:30. For 4 hours, none of us were provided any water.
Corruption and Politics
Politics and corruption exist in every industry and in every sport at some level. We’ve come to expect it. The ballroom dancing world is no different. In fact, since ballroom dancing is judged subjectively, I would argue that politics and corruption are even more rampant than many other sports.
But this competition was far worse than normal. I have always been against allowing children (or parents, although that’s not common) of organizers to dance in the competition. But, for whatever reason, that is allowed in ballroom competitions. So the organizer of this year’s World Championships has a son who had been retired for many years. Then, out of nowhere, he decided to dance. Lo and behold! He had an amazing result, far better than he deserved! Well, we were expecting that.
I wouldn’t even be writing about this except for something terrible that happened to one of our American couples.
Anyone can enter to dance at the World Championships, but only the top 2 couples of every country have their airfare, hotel, food, and entries paid. Because Simeon and I are second, we didn’t have to deal with any of that. We just basically showed up and danced. For America’s third, fourth, and fifth place couples, they had to enter the competition as if it was a normal comp.
Our fourth place couple entered the comp through the competition website and even received the competition’s automatic confirmation. They thought everything was perfect, bought their airfare to Minsk, reserved their hotel, and planned a little vacation afterwards. Everything was good, or so they thought.
Two days before travelling to the competition, they called the competition to find out if they could purchase a table for some friends that would be travelling to watch them. When they called, they discovered they were not entered. After a bit of detective work, they were told by the organizer that he never received their entry. They showed the organizer the link on his competition’s website, including the confirmation email they received. He shrugged it off and told them that because he didn’t personally receive the entry, he would not honor the entry. No amount of entreaties would change his mind. The couple was flying halfway across the world to compete in Belarus, and he simply didn’t care.
We met up with the couple en route in Kiev, and we convinced ourselves that the reason was because the quarter-final was already full and there was no time in the schedule to add another round. Imagine our surprise when we arrived in Minsk to find only 18 couples had entered the World Championships. A full quarter-final is 24 couples. He had 6 extra places to fill before it became a full quarter, so he could easily have allowed the couple to dance. But still, he dug in his heels. Even when the couple did their hair and makeup and showed up at the venue ready to dance, he informed them that he would not allow them to take one step into the venue.
Why? It makes no sense why an organizer would do this. This couple paid for their entry, submitted on time, and to the organizer’s website. We all have our theories, all of them nefarious. This couple is a good Latin couple. The organizer’s son is suspicious in Latin. I’ll leave you to make whatever conclusion you want from that.
What we got from the 2018 World Professional 10-Dance Championships
Honestly, our feelings about the 2018 World Professional 10-Dance Championships were mixed. On the one hand, we felt relieved that there was even a championships at all. On the other hand, it was so corrupt, the organizer broke so many rules trying to run this event so his son could snatch a result from it, that I’m not sure if it even counted as a proper championships. We feel so torn. Is it better to have championships like this that is so corrupt on so many levels that there is no chance of a fair result? Where even if we did manage to place well, we are left with this nagging feeling that you can’t trust the result because everything at this competition was so screwed up? Or is it better not to have one at all?
What a terrible feeling! And we feel so bad for the top three couples, who placed deserved their placements and still this championships is left with a blemish.
On the positive side, we really enjoyed spending time with our fellow competitors from North America and England, whom we have known for years! The British couple, in particular, go so far back that we remember each other from our early Amateur days! It’s always great to see each other again. We like to spend time catching up in the changing rooms and joking about past successes and failures. This sort of camaraderie is not something built in a day and we are thankful for it.
I hope you enjoyed getting an inside look at the ugly side of Dancesport! What do you think? How would you react in a situation like this? Let me know in the comments section! And remember, you can watch our video about our trip to Minsk right here!
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They are great!!! They are spectacular!!!
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Thank you so much! <3