European Tournament for Dancing Students 2009

I signed in for the 41st ”European Tournament for Dancing Student” (ETDS). Hopefully my trainer Andreas, my dancing partner Linda and I get the chance to dance there! It’ll be a great experience for the three of us.

It’ll also be the first time that students from Hildesheim will participate at this huge tournament.

There’ll be more than 500 competitors starting for ballroom dancing in the standard and the latin dances. This year it’ll take place in Groningen (Netherlands) from May 29 until June 01. The students travel from all of Europe to compete in the largest ballroom tournament for students of Europe!

I’m really excited and looking forward to it! Hopefully it’s all working fine!

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Yippie!!! We will participate and are leaving on Friday at noon, probably

 I’ll try to keep you up during pauses between dancing practise

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I’m back!

Today, June 1st, the tournament ended. It was just awesome!!! There were 202 couples participating in the five classes Amateurs, Professionals, Masters, Champions (for the very first time due to that high number of competitors) and Open. It is the biggest tournament ever. The atmosphere was more than great. The University’s Zernike Campus at Tentamenthal RuG en Hanze is a huge complex: The parquet for the dance floor was laid in the dancing hall (in the blue building) and with 500sqm it was the largest ever, the showers were in the “Willem-Alexander Sportcentrum”, and the “International Student Informatiecentrum Hanze” was used as sleeping hall. We had luck sharing a small seminar room with the team from Gießen (6 students) while others had to sleep in the halls. We shared our tables for eating and the time during the whole tournament with the team from Mainz (13 students). We grew together with this two teams so we cheered one another.

On Friday there was a Blind-Date-program for  the dancers of Breitensport which was obligatory for the Open Class and necessary for the dancers who came as singles. Our trainer Andreas was looking for two ladies, one for Latin and one for Ballroom (Standard). End of the day was 3am. Showers were open from 6:45 to 8:45, sleeping hall was closed from 9:00, breakfast was served from 9:00 to 12:00 and the tournament started at 9:00. Therefore there was not much time to rest or to have breakfast

On Saturday, at 9am we had our Ballroom Preliminaries where the adjudicators divided us into the five classes. Linda and I got the starting number 102, for both Ballroom and Latin. They decided to put Andreas into the Masters class and Linda and me into the Amateurs class. At 12 o’clock we started with the official tournament. In the Pre-Round the judges gave us just 1 mark for Slow Waltz, 3 marks for Tango, and 2 marks for Quickstep. Unfortunately that was not enough to enter the Quarter Final . Later on we saw that we could have danced better than some couples in the Quarter or Semi Final

Andreas and his blind-date got to the Semi Final.

For lunch the Organisation Team offered us mini-maccaroni with some meat-veggie-mix. It was quite ok. For dinner the Orga Team ordered Pizzas which were almost could before they got on our plates and the consistency was more like gum.

At 20:30 there was a theme party “Once upon a time…”. As a little show act there was a HipHop/Brakdance Group from Groningen. At that party we danced some Ballroom and became better and better, but it was too late . The party was over at 4 am. 

The next tournament day, Sunday, started as the previous one. At the Latin Preliminaries Linda and I danced into the Amateurs class and Andreas and his second blind-date into the Masters class again. It didn’t start off so good for us in the Pre-Round but after every round we got a very good and helpful feedback from Andreas. Therefore we became always better after every round and during up to 13 heats we had enough time to practice with the new feedback. In the Pre-Round the adjudicators gave us 4 marks for the ChaCha, 6 marks for the Rumba, and even all marks for the Jive. At Quarter Final we got 2 marks for the ChaCha, 4 marks for the Rumba, and 5 marks for the Jive. At Semi Final we got 3, 5, and 5 marks. They didn’t announce the finalists. Therefore everybody had to be prepared to be called onto the dance floor. We didn’t reckon with a place at Final, especially when they were calling one couple after the other onto the dance floor, and then at the last couple… we heard: “and the last couple is from Hildesheim… Linda ***** and Ingo ********”. We were almost dumbfounded. Now we did our damnedest. For Jive they played the song ‘Hafanana’ by Afric Simone. That was the Song that was played in the master final at the tournament for the universities/colleges of Hanover 2005. I danced with my partner in the professional final and we were a lil bit sad that we couldn’t dance to this song. Therefore this time I was twice as much happy. We also got a lot of cheer from Andreas and our new friends from Aachen, Clausthal, Gießen, and Mainz.

After every dance we all had to line up and every couple was called forward to receive its positions from the adjudicators. We could already see that we won’t be on last place. At the end of the presentation ceremony we got a very happy 4th place leaving 53 couples behind us. After that there was a final dance for the finalists so we switched partners several times.

At 20:30 we went to our Gala with a dinner prepared by the Orga Team. We ate potato salad, mixed salad, vega nudels, and rice with meat balls. For dessert we had either apple pie or pineapple smooth. It was quite tasty. There was again some show at that night: The Dutch Ballroom couple gave us some impressive moves of Quickstep, Slow Waltz, Slow Fox , and Viennese Waltz. The dancing team “The Blue Toes” from Groningen presented some dances as well.

This time’s winner of the Tanzmaus (a competition where you collect points for the positions of your teammates’ heats) is Berlin.

After the Tournament, on Monday we had some breakfast, packed, and set out for home.

All in all it was an awesome and successful weekend for us and we are already looking forward to participate in the next ETDS 2010!!!