Provided that we can sort everything out in time, we could have us quite a programming line-up on the new DanceSport Total | DST platform over the weekend of 24 and 25 February. Two European Championships - one in Standard Formation and the other in Youth Latin - on Sunday and a Junior World Cup in Acrobatic Rock 'n' Roll the day before.
Rest assured that we will try everything possible to have another top-quality production courtesy of the All Russian Federation of DanceSport and Acrobatic Rock'n'Roll and its host broadcaster Match TV. The last time we webcast an event LIVE from Russia was in October 2017, when the two GrandSlams had audiences in the range of 30,000 each - in less than 24 hours.
This does not only make reference to us wrapping up the European Championship Standard over the next few hours and days, it also applies to more coverage on other events coming up soon. A small WDSF Communications team will be on location in Sochi, RUS, for the following competitions staged at one of the Olympic venues there on 24 and 25 February:
2018 World Cup R&R Junior |
Ice Cube, Sochi, RUS |
24/02/2018 |
2018 European STD Formation |
Ice Cube, Sochi, RUS |
25/02/2018 |
2018 European Youth LAT |
Ice Cube, Sochi, RUS |
25/02/2018 |
Provided we will be able to work out the logistics, we will offer you different LIVE streams of all three competitions through DanceSport Total | DST and complement that with our usual forms of reporting. Our colleague Helmut Roland, who missed Copenhagen due to a broken shoulder, will be back in action, toting cameras as much as his doctors allow him to.
We have added the first photos taken by Renata Kaleta to the Gallery above. And that's just the beginning. The number of YouTube videos uploaded to the same Gallery should increase too: more than 50 were recorded.
It was a great championship and we'll make sure that those who missed the live stream on Saturday night will get a chance to watch it too - as usual, through our Vimeo on Demand service DanceSport Total Plus.
The coverage coming out of the 2017 European Standard marks how future events will be reported on. On one hand, there continues to be a steady flow of clips (single camera following one couple) covering the early rounds. They will get uploaded in nearly real-time to the WDSF YouTube channel. From all locations where this is technically possible - and various factors need to be considered to make that assessment - a multi-camera live feed on the decisive rounds is offered through the new DanceSport Total | DST platform. Last but not least, an edited version of this feed - enhanced by interviews and behind-the-scene pieces - becomes available after the event through the video-on-demand service.
Viewing of the 2017 European Standard was massive. But more on that later!
Next we will upload more videos and the first photos to this blog. Three photographers have made their pictures available to us. We'll start with the pictures taken by Renata Kaleta and Marius Mutin.
Dmitry Zharkov and Olga Kulikova continued where they had left off in the last competition they danced in. On 10 December 2017 they made it to the highest echelon of the podium in the GrandSlam Standard Final in Shanghai, CHN.
Just nine weeks later they ended up in the same enviable position at the 2018 European Standard danced at the Tivoli Congress Centre in Copenhagen, DEN. Winning their third consecutive continental title of their career, they swept the numerous audience off their seats for a standing ovation.
We have recorded post-event interviews with Dmitry and Olga as well as the other medallist couples. We'll try to upload them overnight.
Denmark wouldn’t be Denmark without the “Danish Dynamite” adapted to befit the sport where it is supposed to explode with maximum impact! We all remember the chants by football fans making a strong national squad invincible and pushing it to claim the European Champion title in 1992. Huge flags waved by strong men wearing Viking helmets and with their faces painted red and white.
What we see here at the European Championships Standard is a slightly scaled down version of the same flag coming in a set of 10 for the groups sitting at the floorside tables.
The Danish DanceSport fans may be wearing a more conservative attire - and they don't have their faces painted either - but they are every bit as enthusiastic as their football counterparts. "We're red, we're white, we're Danish Dynamite ..."
We are getting conflicting reports on the quality of our stream from the 2018 European Standard. Some say it's nice and clean, of a very high quality, and others complain about it getting stuck buffering, of being of horrendously bad quality. These are the facts: we're monitoring what goes out from the Tivoli Congress Centre and what comes back. We look at the quality of the stream on two devices (iPad and MacBook) through a public WiFi that is used be hundreds of people around us. And what we see we like: a perfect stream coming back to us!
So maybe you want to set the quality back from 1080 on your end! And continue watching www.dancesporttotal.com
The perefectionists we are in these matters, we decided to cut the first part of our LIVE transmission from Copenhagen short to conduct a long briefing between all parties involved in the production before the start of the evening session. Not that anything was bad in any way. Actually, we have received kudos from people watching in different parts of the world - and that is very encouraging. But we feel that we can improve further on several aspects in the time for the second webcast. It starts at 20:00 with the opening ceremony and takes us until close to midnight, the climax when the 2018 European Champions are crowned.
In this webcast we will show you the semi-final and final of the European Standard and the same of the Copenhagen World Open Latin. Promised!
Here is the schedule for the next webcast! Tune in at www.dancesporttotal.com
20:00 |
Opening Ceremony |
|
20:30 |
WDSF World Open Latin |
Semi-Final |
21:00 |
WDSF European Standard |
Semi-Final |
21:30 |
Break |
|
21:50 |
WDSF World Open Latin |
Final |
22:25 |
Awards Presentation |
|
22:45 |
WDSF European Standard |
Final |
23:20 |
Awards Presentation |
|