We have made reference to the one and only vlogger among the top-ranked dancers on the international circuit once before. Yes, we are talking about Winson Tam, CAN, a Ten Dance standout (Anastasia Novikova is his partner) with very solid Latin credentials (# 15 in the World Ranking) - and with Standard not too far behind (# 23). He has been vlogging for over a year now: at regular intervals, Winson distributes a L.O.A.D. (Life of A Dancer) instalment through his YouTube channel. 29 episodes so far!
We show you Winson's vlog on last year's GrandSlam in Helsinki, FIN, with the intention to motivate you to do something along these lines yourself on this year's edition. In fact, we make it an official vlogging competition: whoever gets the most views with a personal video account on his or her participation in Finland by 31 March will win vouchers for our DanceSport Total video-on-demand service. Because one thing we don't want you to do is to record and show anything happening on the floor from the quarterfinal onward.
The inaugural leg of the GrandSlam Series 2018 is only three days away. On Saturday 3 March, the world's best Standard dancers will take to the floor at the Vantaa Arena in Helsinki, FIN, to contest the first GrandSlam victory of the year. Dmitry Zharkov and Olga Kulikova, RUS, will be there to continue where they had left off not even three months ago: on top of their game - victorious. They swept the Series 2017, winning all five regular legs as well as the Showdown in Shanghai.
Top-level DanceSport in contrasting disciplines marked the weekend of 24 and 25 February in Sochi, RUS. WDSF was able to bring you two live streams with all the action from the Ice Cube, the curling venue of the 2014 Winter Olympics. Everybody who had the opportunity to watch some of it would have to agree that the competitions and their setting were of an oustanding quality. Well done, dancers and organisers!
Anastasia Titkova, the international liaison officer of the All Russian Federation for DanceSport and Rock 'n' Roll, put it all into perspective, when she posted on Facebook: "Four years ago, at about the same time, the Olympics took place in Sochi! Now we had our own Olympics there. We were all together again! Old and new friends! European sportsmen, coaches and officials came to visit us."
If you missed it: highlight programmes on the European Championships in Youth Latin and Standard Formation are still in the pipelines.
More DanceSport is coming your way with the 2018 GrandSlam Helsinki starting on 3 March.
It was a pleasure to bring you this high-quality stream produced by Russia's leading sports channel, Match TV, and courtesy of the All Russian Federation of DanceSport and Acrobatic Rock 'n' Roll. It's great to work together with professionals. Thanks, guys!
This stream will eventually be substituted by highlight programmes which we will make available through DanceSport Total | DST.
We are signing off for today and invite you to the next live webcast which we will produce on Saturday 3 March from the GrandSlam Standard in Helsinki, FIN.
We have tried to put today's webcast on DanceSport Total | DST, our new streaming platform. Fact is that it is so new that we ran into some insurmountable problems between encoding and delivering the stream through Vimeo. To be on the safe side, we have now abandaoned the initial plan and resorted to YouTube.
Over the next four hours, we show you the semi-final and final of the European Youth Latin as well as the last round of the European Standard Formation ... And between these highlights you'll get to enjoy showcases.
We have a minor problem with our DST platform. Until it is resolved, we embed the player with the YouTube live stream right here!
We start the live transmission with the quarterfinal of the 2018 European Youth Latin: 24 couples dancing their heart out to make it to the evening part of this championship. At the conclusion of this round the organisers will get ready for tonight's mix of decisive championship stages and shows of the caliber of what we saw yesterday.
The preliminary round of the 2018 European Standard Formation is underway. Eight formations are vying for one of the six berths in the final that will be danced later as part of the evening gala.
Aleksey Litvinov, the trainer legend of current World Champions Vera Tyumen, looks long and hard at the competition from the T.C. Ludwigbsurg.
With the next round of the European Youth Latin we will start the live webcast from the Ice Cube in Sochi. Follow it on www.dancessporttotal.com!