Irish Masters 2010

Another weekend, another event. Nicola and Sam made their way to their respective airports late on Thursday night to arrive into Ireland with enough time to prepare everything that needed preparing for the Irish Masters 2010.

Held in the beautiful Park Hotel, Dundalk, the event was bound to be an exciting one with World Dance Masters' biggest registration of the year so far. Over 220 dancers had registered to compete. The only thing about this bothering the Masters Team was how they were going to manage to get through all the heats in just one day!

Saturday morning arrived quickly enough and Nicola and Sam were up early to make sure all things were in order. On Friday evening Tommy Weafer arrived to set-up for being our fabulous DJ for the day and the Park Hotel staff worked through the night to ensure the venue ballroom was set-up according to our meticulous specifications! All was ready to go and our nerves were calm.....until we saw the queue waiting to come in!!!

The next mission was getting everyone through the door and registered as quickly as possible with thanks to Jason Hill. Job done in 30 minutes, on schedule, even though Sam had lost a good clump on his hair though the stress of having to calculate everyones entry in his head! By 10:30 the hall was packed and we were ready to kick-off with the Pro-Am competition. Our first congratulation goes to our Pros; James McLauchlan, Lee Easton, Fred Whitehouse, Sam Robins and Shane McKeever danced tirelessly for almost 1hr 30mins to get all of our Pro-Am heats done on schedule. What a job they did.

After a very quick two song break our floor co-ordinators Elaine Fox , Jason Hill, Rosita Shekelton and Sharon Kennedy, along with MC Damien Brady, had got all the dancers competing in the heats ready to go. Our judges for the day (Nicola Lafferty, Lee Easton, James McLauchlan, Ann Cunningham and apprentice judges Fred Whithouse, Paul Culshaw and Bernie Lenaghan) were ready to rock and so on came our first heat of Newcomer Juniors. What a performance they all gave. This followed with our other heats in the relative divisions. Placed in between these preliminaries was our newest division - Starter. Over 30 dancers competed in this new One Dance division and oh my, did they get some support from the 300 strong audience. The Starter scoring was produced quickly by our scorer Sam Robins and the Starter awards were done by the end of the heats. Congratulations to all the Starter dancers - you were magnificent and we hope you all come back and compete again. Everyone else, watch out for the new Starter Division next year and get some people rallied up to compete. One dance, three divisions, offered at every competition concluding at Worlds 2011!

At 3:30 we were finally ready to start our Finals. A little late in the day but the time flew by. Thank you to all our amazing staff for their organisation and the wonderful competitors for being ready to go whenever we called them. This was by far the most tense schedule we have ever run and by 19:00 we were ready for all the trophies to be awarded. Now that is called super efficiency!

Finally at 20:00 we started our evening social (Sam disappeared to go and catch up on the England football match for a brief 30 minutes). DJ'd by Tommy Weafer and our very own Nicola Lafferty, everybody enjoyed a wonderful evening of dancing and relaxing until.....well, 03:00!!

And that concluded the Irish Masters 2010. Once again, thank you to EVERYONE for the unbelievable support. Thank you to the Park Hotel for helping make everything run smoothly and a special thank you to Elaine Fox, Sharon Kennedy, Jason Hill, Rosita Shekelton, Damien Brady, Tommy Weafer, David Fiddis, David Marsh, Paul Culshaw, Lee Easton, Ann Cunningham, Fred Whitehouse, Bernie Lenaghan and Gail Cowie (temporary photographer while Sam was too busy!) for all their help and support throughout the day.

For all those coming to Worlds, see you there. For all those not, we hope to see you at the Irish Challenge, 4th September 2010 in Ty Holland!

Scandinavian Masters 2010

The 2nd Scandinavian masters took place in the beautiful City of Stockholm at the SAS Radisson Blu hotel. Event Directors Marianne & Ingemar Kardeskog had invited a great range of staff to the event to cater for all possible tastes. Scott Blevins, Kate Sala, Robbie McGowan-Hickie and Craig Bennett were on hand for the social dancers, and Sam Robins, Nicola Lafferty and Arild Lekanger were there to teach in the Swing Room. As well as a main room for social dancers where the workshops would take place and a swing room, there was a fast track social room for non-stop requests plus super-fast teaches of the dances being taught in the main ballroom! Talk about catering for everyone!

On Friday evening the event began in the main room with a social and workshops from the choreographers. Ingemar and Marcus kept everyone dancing until late with a great mix of music, from beginner to advanced. In the swing room there were beginner workshops from Arild and Sam & Nicola to teach the basics of West Coast Swing and an introduction of West Coast Swing Jack & Jill, where Sam took it upon himself to force everybody in the room to sign up! Pressure...
Saturday started early with a wonderful breakfast and then some great workshops. Dances taught over the weekend included the following; from Scott Blevins we had ‘Trouble Is’, ‘Murder Machine’, ‘Oh Ruby’, ‘Cold Blooded’ and ‘Cha Cha Tonight’. Kate Sala taught ‘Pantaloons’, ‘Yolanda’ and ‘Plan B’. Robbie McGowan-Hickie taught ‘All Cool’, Burn It Up’ and ‘Work It Out’ and from Craig Bennett we had ‘Latin Crazy’, ‘For The Lovers’, ‘Standing In The Shadows’ and ‘Running in the Wrong Direction’.
Workshops in the Swing Room continued with Novice and Intermediate classes, accumulating in a fun Jack & Jill competition. Again, Sam made sure almost everyone in the room had been signed up to compete and even threatened to lock everyone in if someone tried to leave. The competition ran with great success and our winners, Fredrik Wallin & Merete Brandli were presented with two free passes to Worlds 2010. Congratulations to everyone who competed, we hope you all enjoyed the experience.

After a quick break for another great meal, the main room opened for the evening. Kicking off the show for the Saturday night were Sam & Nicola with their West Coast Swing routine, followed by Tiina Aalto and Juho Paivenen from Finland impressing the audience with their Pro-Am Couples routines. Sam and Nicola then finished the show with a mixture of line and couples dancing to the theme of Annie Get Your Gun. Social dancing then continued well into the small hours, and everyone went to bed exhausted but happy after a fantastic night’s dancing.
Sunday morning arrived quickly enough with another busy day. The swing room became the Scandinavian Masters competition room as competitors from all over Scandinavia battled it out to become Scandinavian Champions in Choreography, Pro-Am and Line Dance. The judges included Scott Blevins, Nicholas Cort from Sweden (our newest Masters Judge), Kate Sala and Nicola. They all had a difficult job with all the talent on show. Congratulations again to everyone who danced! You were all magnificent.

Sunday didn’t offer just competition though, the main room held workshops again from Kate, Craig and Robbie all day with lots of social dancing in between. The variety at this event was amazing!
After a long day of competition and social dancing, the awards presented and the dancers all danced out, it was time to say goodbye. Thanks to everyone who attended the event, all of the staff, helpers, DJ’s and Instructors. It takes a lot of background work to put on such a diverse and well run event, so a special thanks to Marianne & Ingemar for such a fantastic job!

Keep your eye out for the launch of the new World Dance Masters website to find out whats happening at the Scandinavian Masters 2011!