The phenomenon of dance

World Youth Ten-Dance 2005 Finalist; Austrian Latin, Standard and Ten-Dance Youth Champion 2005; Youth Canadian Latin, Standard Champion 2003, 2004. In 2011 he started his TV-career by participating in the Austrian version of the BBC-format Strictly Come Dancing, called “Dancing Stars”. He teamed up with Alfons Haider, a well known Austrian actor and TV-host. 2012 he again took part in the 7th season of “Dancing Stars” in Austria, this time together with the Austrian singer Petra Frey. This time he won the contest, and Petra and he are the “Dancing Stars 2012” in Austria. Show Dance World Finalist 2012 and Austrian 2013 Champion

It’s a shame that one cannot become a world known legend being a ballroom dancer. We work hard our whole competitive lives, just like the other athletes and artists. A skiing champion will be known by all within the country because it’s shown on TV and talked about on radio. Top quality ballet dancers like Baryshnikov, Nureyev and Bruhl will be always known throughout the world. Their concerts were attended by thousands of people every evening and they were in the newspapers and on TV.

Not so many know the world champions in sports, but the Olympic stars are surely known by a wider range of audiences; especially in their home countries. Nobody that is out of the dance world knows Donnie Burns and Gaynor Fairweather (14 times world pro Latin champions), Bill and Bobbie Irvine or Markus and Karen Hilton (9 times world pro standard champions). These achievements in dance sport are surely comparable to Baryshnikov’s and Nureyev’s in ballet. They are also comparable to Len Armstrong’s unbeaten titles in Cycling or Mike Tyson in boxing.

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The question is: “Why are other sports or dance forms known to the public more than dance sport?” I think that boxing is popular because pure fighting is in the blood of any human being since the beginning of the existence of us as species. It’s somehow the force of survival, especially a million years ago. The sweat, pain, anger are all very purely sensed by the human mind when watching fighting sport like boxing. Skiing is also more widely watched than dancing. Surely as a separate discipline the various ski sports exist longer than ballroom dancing, but is it the main reason? The phenomenon of dance exists much longer than any of today’s sports. People always expressed themselves through body motions to some beats, and always showed their relationship to the opposite sex. To my view today in dance sport the factors that are the most attractive to a large scale of people are very high class body actions, an intimate relationship between the man and the woman, the competitive factor and beautiful attractive people and costumes.

I think that competitive ballroom dancers or teachers today are intellectually on the same level as all the other types of dancers (jazz, ballet, modern) and could be on bit higher level than all of the other sports. Ballroom dancers usually have good manners, have quite a good understanding of dealing with the opposite sex and are psychologically powerful.

Comments by Naoki, dance promoter: the issue is not having clear criteria at all for score judgment. DanceSport is much more artistic as its background so it could be not easy at all to set forth clear criteria for judgment.