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South American Scene

South American Scene

I was very excited to be invited to go to Santiago, Chile in September for their first IDSF DanceSport Championship.

I had previously been to Chile in 2008 with Cristian de la Fuente and loved the country and the people. I was interested to see the dance scene in this part of the world and I was not disappointed!

There were couples from Chile, Argentina, Ecuador, Mexico and Spain, and although the dancing was not as high as European and American competitions, the enthusiasm of the couples was amazing.

There was a 16-piece Latin band that was the best live Latin music I have ever heard and I wanted to bring them back to the U.S.A. for all our events.

A parade of all the couples with the flags of their nations including a couple from Tobago who demonstrated their national dances was highly entertaining. There was also a wonderful show featuring the national dances of Chile, accompanied by a Folklorico Orchestra.

I was pleased to see some excellent show numbers choreographed by Jose Luis Tejo who also danced both traditional Chilean dances and ballroom dancing.

There were two excellent show numbers performed by Juan and Anastasia from Spain. Their choreography was very interesting in an American Smooth style and performed with great feeling and panache. They also were judges for this event. Other judges included: Vadim Mostevoy from Canada, Carlos Freitag from Spain and Chairman Marco Seitas from Spain as well as myself.

The couples are for the most part trained by coaches in their countries and with the help of Juan and Anastasia they are all doing an excellent job. There is considerable talent in this part of the world and of course they all have a great look in the Latin style due in part to their nationalities. The Latin events were of a higher level then the Standard but they were definitely enthusiastic in both styles.

I would like to thank Jose Luis Tejo for doing such a good job of presenting this event along with the IDSF committee. Thank you very much for asking me to be a judge, I can't wait to return to Chile. The audience was so appreciative of the dancing and I was very happy to be part of this competition and to experience so much joy with the people of South America.