2016 GrandSlam Helsinki

The first of the two Vimeo on Demand programmes covering the 2016 GrandSlam Helsinki is available for rental. It's the Standard that was danced on Saturday 5 March!

For US$ 3.75 you get to watch the co-production between the Finnish public broadcaster YLE and the WDSF Communications team as many time as you want during the rental period of three months.

The 9-camera production in High Definition covers the decisive stages of the GrandSlam Standard Helsinki. The programme is made up of four parts: the full-length semi-final, interviews with the finalists, the full-length final and interviews with the medallists. The total running time is 92 minutes!

A separate bonus feature consists of exclusive in-depth interviews with Simone Segatori - Annete Sudol, GER, and with Bjorn Bitsch - Ashli Williamson, DEN. It will be available shortly from the same Vimeo page as the Standard programme - click here.

The music in this trailer is "Up," a Viennese Waltz by Chartbreaker, available though www.casa-musica.de.

The WDSF Communications team is about to wrap up post-production on one of the two Vimeo on Demand programmes that cover the first leg of the GrandSlam Series 2016. The Standard will get released tomorrow, Friday 11 March, together with a bonus feature that we are sure you will appreciate.

On the eve of the GrandSlam Standard, on Friday 4 March, we conducted in-depth interviews with Simone Segatori - Annete Sudol, GER, and with Bjorn Bitsch - Ashli Williamson, DEN. All in all close to 30 minutes of first-hand insights into the lives and the careers of some of the best couples in our sport.

Below is an excerpt of an interview we conducted on 6 March with the current World Champions Latin Gabriele Goffredo - Anna Matus, MDA, ahead of the GrandSlam Latin in Helsinki. It gives you an idea what to expect.

Pre-order the 2016 GrandSlam Standard Helsinki Vimeo on Demand programme here!

We have just received 12 exceptional photographs taken by Swiss photographer Reinhard Egli during the 2016 GrandSlam Standard in Helsinki. Egli is not only an expert at handling a still camera and as such a regular contributor to WDSF Communications, he is also the publisher of the Swiss magazine "dance!"

In an accompanying message he writes, "I put together a slightly different selection of pictures for you this time: ACTION! I have tried to capture the dynamism of modern Standard dancing in this sequence."

We say that our colleague Reinhard succeeded 100% in doing just that! Look at the other 11 photographs in the Gallery above!

The online coverage that the WDSF Communications team produced on the first two GrandSlams of the year found its way to huge audiences on all platforms. Heavy traffic to the WDSF YouTube channel DanceSport Total upped the existing record for number of views per day - 151,192 views on 15 August, during the 2015 GrandSlam Stuttgart - by a few notches to 154,368 on Sunday 6 March.

Website traffic was equally heavy, with a peak of very close to 30,000 visitors on Sunday 6 March. And then there is the WDSF Facebook page: in the early morning hours (CET) of the same day the number of fans surpassed the mark of 50,000.

Interesting was the fact that one couple in particular drew the most attention on all platforms: Andrey Gusev and Vera Bondareva, RUS, generated more YouTube views plus likes there as well as on Facebook than the others. The post about them was the blog's most widely read. Not bad, considsering that it was the couple's first outing! They already told us that they would be in Wuhan too!

The first regular leg of the 2016 GrandSlam Series put everyone involved back on track towards the season-ending "Final Showdown in Shanghai." Everyone who was present in Helsinki that is!

After the first big-time competition of 2016 we can happily conclude that nearly all of the couples that had excelled in Standard as well as Latin last year return to the floor with as much vigour as ever. Sure, there were a few prominent absentee couples, all of them in Latin. 

Fortunately there are those top-tier couples - fortunately the majority - that travel anywhere to compete at any time, in front of any panel of adjudicators. And that is how it should be!

Anna Jacobson, the social media manager of the International World Games Association (IWGA), came to the Messukeskus Expo to watch the 2016 GrandSlam Helsinki and some of the other competitions scheduled over the weekend. Obviosuly, she regularly posted her thoughts, videos and photos to all the social media platforms of The World Games: Facebook, Twitter, etc.

To the left is one of her posts. We tend to agree with Anna's assessment that there lies a great future ahead of DanceSport.

And as a footnote: Today, 7 March 2016, marks an important milestone on the road to the next edition of The World Games. The multi-sport event that has DanceSport included since 1997 will get underway in Wroclaw, POL, exactly 500 days from now. Mark your calendars!

The 2016 GrandSlam Latin Helsinki brought the Finland Open weekend to a conclusion last night. Hall 4 of the Messukeskus Expo was sold out for the evening session that started off with a showcase of what DanceSport under the auspices of the Finnish DanceSport Federation has evolved into during the first 40 years of the organisation's existence.

The highlight at the end of the packed schedule was the final round of the GrandSlam Latin, with six couples dazzling the expert audience through their performances in three solo and two group dances. And what a show it was!

The result reflects that the two couples that had dominated the Series in 2015 are set to do the same in the 2016 legs. If anything, the winning margin of a mere 0.6 makes another statement about how close winners Gabriele Goffredo - Anna Matus, MDA, and runners-up Armen Tsaturyan - Svetlana Gudyno, RUS, are to one another at the top of the standing.

Vera Bondareva danced in the GrandSlam Latin Helsinki last year and ended up winning it together with her then partner Nino Langella. Theirs was a short-lived partnership, but a highly successful one indeed: a national championship title, a GrandSlam first and another win at an International Open in Italy. Then they called it quits and Nino moved on to other pastures ... And Vera?

Well, Vera is back with her new partner Andrey Gusev and dancing under the Russian flag. Will they make the final in this their first international competition? What do you think?