Southern Masters 2011

This year we had a change in venue for our annual Southern Masters competition. The newly renovated Old Regent Ballroom in Stanford-le-Hope, run by the incomparable Frankie Cull & Shawnee Young, was our destination.  With the World Dance Masters (WDM) Team based in different locations, we travelled from all around the country from Blackpool, Manchester, London and Glasgow to reach our destination.

On arriving at the venue (once we’d found it due to Sam’s rubbish SatNav), a lovely entrance invited us upstairs to a very impressive space, just perfect for our competition. Frankie & Shawnee were very accommodating to the team, helping in every way they could.

We opened the doors at 10:00am to a stream of waiting guests outside who soon made themselves very comfortable – the venue is great with a large dance floor, superb lighting and a friendly and fun atmosphere. If you haven’t had chance to visit, we strongly recommend you do.

The day started with a Zumba warm up from our Competition Director Nicola Lafferty who had our dancers (and even a few mums, dads and grans) up getting a little out of breath with a fantastic 3 track warm up routine. Everybody was now fully ready to take to the floor. Our team for the day were judges Nicola Lafferty, Jodie Seedel, Fabienne Henshall & apprentice judging Leigh Welch, with MC Lee Easton, Scorer Sam Robins & Jamie Whalley doubling up as DJ and photographer.

The competition started with our Pro-Am dancers taking over the floor and showing what they had to offer. Some amazing dancing skills from Newcomer to Advanced were displayed. Next up was dance 1 of our solo competition, and if you’ve never been to a WDM event before, the competition really does have to be seen to be believed. Our Rugrats & Primary divisions are often more closely fought than our top Allstars division, and Southern Masters was no exception, with our youngest dancers excelling themselves.

Following dances 1 & 2 we had a West Coast Swing workshop with Lee & Fabienne. This was to teach the Flashmob WCS routine to ‘DJ Got Us Falling in Love’ by Usher and Pitbull. If you haven’t seen the Flashmob, or indeed West Coast Swing then take a look at www.worlddancemasters.com, our Facebook page (Search for World Dance Masters) or YouTube to see what it’s all about.

After a short break we went into dance 3 of the competition, Funky and Showdance. This is always a joy to see as everyone, dancer or spectator is really pumped up. The atmosphere was electric. With all the solo competition over it was time for our Duos. ‘Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy’ by Bette Midler, and ‘Canned Heat’ by Jamiroquai were the songs used for our competitors to showcase their own choreography – a real treat.  Our awards ceremony wrapped the competition up nicely with everyone winning a trophy & certificate and qualifying for the Euro Dance Masters 2011 Championships in March, and completing one of the required two qualifiers for World Dance Masters in August.

A short break in the early evening for the team to enjoy a nice curry (yum yum) and onto the  evening social hosted by Frankie himself. The night started off with some great golden oldies including the likes of ‘Swing It’ (Nicola’s very favourite dance ever), ‘Smooth Criminal’ and ‘MJ Moves’ with Jamie in his element remembering practically all of them! The social had a fantastic mix of beginner to advanced dances, partner & circle dances, a little west coast swing and even more of the latest top 10. 

The WDM team then took to the floor to perform a show – a west coast swing routine from Lee & Fabienne, a Duos routine from Hannah Day & Danielle Louise Rowe and finally the Masters Elite Show Team medley that they performed at the Crystal Boot Awards in January. The atmosphere was electric the whole day long, helped by the lighting, acoustics and feel of the venue – Frankie really has excelled himself. It was a great evening. To find out more of the venue visit their website www.theoldregentballroom.com.

The World Dance Masters Team would like to thank Frankie & Shawnee for making us so welcome, all our competitors, their friends, parents and families for attending and supporting the event, and every social dancer who attended the evening party.

Welsh Masters 2011

Welsh Masters 2011 was the first Welsh event Masters have held for several years so we were all very excited to be back. This year, the event was in Barry Island – made famous by BBC comedy serious ‘Gavin & Stacey’, so we were star spotting too!

Arriving at the venue, Barry Island Sports & Social Club, we set up for doors to open at 10.00am; most of Sam’s time was spent messing around with (sorry – technically adjusting!) the lights to set the stage and banners with just the right atmosphere. The trophies looked awesome.

 Event staff for the day were Judges Sydney Smyth, Paul Culshaw & Competition Director Nicola Lafferty with apprentice judge Abbie Ingram, scorer & photographer Sam Robins & DJ Jamie Whalley. A special thanks also goes to Charlotte O’Connor for manning the door all day. We kicked off with a Zumba workout from Sydney Smyth – competitors, parents and spectators alike joined in and soon everyone’s pulses were racing as they danced through 3 high energy routines.  Zumba is a great way to warm up our competitors ready for the day’s competition, and also a fun easy form of dance that non-dancers can join in and have fun with.

Following the Zumba and competition warm-up music it was time for our dancers to take to the floor. From Rugrats & Primary to Advanced & Allstars, we had dancers from every division – some competing with Masters for the very 1^st time. Dance 1 was followed by a WCS Flashmob workshop with Sam & Nicola.

If you haven’t seen the WCS Flashmob look out for the video coming soon to our Facebook page. We performed it at UK Masters in December in Blackpool and are planning to perform it in Liverpool City Centre at European Dance Masters in March – make sure you’re there.

Back to the competition, Dance B came and went without a hitch, and with lots of smiles. Following Dance B was a Latin/Street dance workshop with Paul Culshaw. This was a complex & fast routine but as always, our dancers never faulted and relished to opportunity to get their teeth into some great choreography from Paul.

Dance C was a hi-light of the competition, as our younger dancers got to show off their high energy funky routines and we got entertained by our older dancers performing their showdances.  Nicola then taught a Newcomer level Nightclub line dance to the beautiful Country version of ‘Home’ by Blake Shelton and we had a recap of all the workshops that had been taught during the day.

It was then time for awards, with competitors receiving trophies and certificates and in the case of our Primary dancers, teddy bears too!

We closed for a few hours to allow the team to eat – KFC (yum yum) and opened again at 7.30pm for our evening social. As ever we had a wide range of dancers at our social, competitors, intermediate dancers, advanced dancers, parents and friends so there was a very wide range of dances. From the latest top 10 to golden oldies from the early 90’s and everything in between. If you haven’t been to a Masters evening social event you should, we try as much as we can to play all requests and to cater for as many different people as we can.

The social finished up at 11.00pm with everyone tired but happy! It was then time for the team to pack up and head to bed.  We’d like to thank everyone who came to support the Welsh Masters, and hope to see you at one of our upcoming events: Southern Masters & French Masters in February and European Masters & Southern Swedish Cup in March.

1st Masters Day of Dance incorporating Northern Masters 2010

This year’s Northern Masters was definitely something a little different. We wanted to try something new, so we introduced the 1^st Day of Dance to the Northern Masters 2010. Based upon the idea of offering even better value for money for our dancers AND spectators, we introduced a time-utilised day of competition and workshops, literally providing a full day of dance for all our attendees.

These were not standard workshops though, they were picked and decided upon by notion of offering dance styles that the competitors don’t usually, or might never have, enjoyed. We had Zumba (the latest latin fitness craze sweeping the WORLD!), West Coast Swing, Mambo, Jazz & Social Line Dance (something a lot of competitors don’t get to enjoy that regularly).

The day began at around 06:00 for the Masters Team, who all arose to make the journey to The Dance Studio, Preston, Lancs (ran by the delightful and always helpful Julie & Colin Carr). After setting up, doors were opened at around 10:00 and the guests settled into their favourite seats and prepared for the day. After some initial warm-up music the first workshop started – ZUMBA! The floor was full and it was very entertaining. Qualified Zumba Instructor Nicola Lafferty took to the stage for around 40 minutes while competitors, spectators and parents enjoyed a thorough workout. Some of the tracks used were C'Mon & Dance (a merengue/hip hop track), Los Campeones del a Salsa & Baila Pa Emonciona - Calypso, No Americano & finally a cool down to Breath by Faith Hill.

The Pro-Am practice music followed and then continued into our Pro-Am competition, straight into Dance A of the Line Dances. The dances used for this competition were the same as Worlds 2010 so everyone got to the bust out the moves they already knew. Remember that all the dances will change for UK Masters in December! After Dance A and Pro-Am had concluded we started with our second workshop, a very special West Coast Swing session taught by Nicola Lafferty & Sam Robins.

In this workshop Nicola & Sam taught a small, 32-count swing routine to Usher’s DJ Got Us Falling in Love which is going to be used to conduct a Flash Mob in Blackpool Town Centre on Sunday 12^th December 2010, the morning after our event in the Blackpool Tower Ballroom. For more information on this Flash Mob, click here. Find out what a Flash Mob is, where and why we plan to do it and find a video of the routine to learn so you can join in! We’ll be teaching this at all of our next events so that everyone can participate!

After this we had another fabulous display of talent when we proceed with Dance B of our competition. This event had everything in the competition stakes, competitors new and old (some first time dancers with Masters and some of our new Division 1 graduates dancing for the first time); the standard of competition was proving to be as amazing as always. Next we had a Latin workshop from IDTA Instructor Zoe Powell. Zoe (and reluctant partner Sam, who knew nothing about the next dance form or the routine that was about to be taught) took to the floor to teach the dancers and parents about the Mambo! Sexy, sassy, and pretty fast, everyone enjoyed this 30 minute insight into one of the more technical Latin dances to 'Johnny's Theme' from the Dirty Dancing soundtrack.

Back to the competition. The dancers finished of their work through Dance C, bringing our competition to and end but with still two workshops left! The next workshop was taught by Strictly Dance Fever finalist & Division 1 World Champion Paul Culshaw. Paul took to the stage to teach a Jazz number to a great DJ Earthworm track - the Sean Kingston Beautiful Mashup'! It was great to see not only experienced dancers on the floor learning this but also social dancers and parents. It definitely brought a sweat on to all those who participated. 

The final workshop of the day came from The Dance Studio's very own Julie Carr who taught a new 48 count 2 wall high intermediate dance by Dee Musk called Fall Apart to a great track by the same name from Sarah Connor which went down well - You can view the script here, and video here. The final part of the first aspect of the 1st Day of Dance was the awards. Some very close divisions in this competition proved that the standard of dance at Masters Competitions keeps getting better with the gap between levels ever narrowing!

After a small break we re-opened the doors for the evening social with DJ Jamie & DJ Sam, which went on until 23:30. The dance requests were very VERY eclectic, old and new ranging from No Salvation and Murder My Heart to T-Bone Shuffle & Lamtara Rumba, from I Run To You, Drip Droppin', Haunted & Hot Out Of The Box, to Deeply Completely, Do Your Thing, Now or Never, Brucie, Tik Tok Drop, Stupid In Love and much much MUCH more, finally being brought to an end by DJ Sam getting everyone in the Christmas spirit by doing the Tush Push to All I Want For Christmas (Is You) by Mariah Carey! Only 74 sleeps to go!!!

We'd like to thank everyone for their support on this experimental day. We have an amazing time and the feedback we have received has been great. We'll definitely be introducing more of these workshops at future events so keep your eyes peeled for more information. For more information on the UK Masters Flash Mob that we will be conducting please click here.

East Coast Masters 2010

The 1st East Coast Masters took place on Saturday 26th June 2010 at Blue Dolphin Holiday Park in Filey, Scarborough. Event Staff for the day were MC Nicola Lafferty, DJ Jamie Whalley, Judges Danny Last, Jodie Seedel & Emily Drinkall, with Anne Buchan & Zoe Powell apprentice judging, scorer Alison Eadie, Photographer Paul Rhoades, floor coordinator Elizabeth Lafferty with John Lafferty on the door. Also making an appearance was Mr Rob Fowler who’d flown over from Spain.

The day kicked off to a great start with a long queue outside for doors opening at 10:00am. With almost 100 solo dance entries as well as Pro-Am, duos, quads & teams it was going to be another busy day. The room soon filled up as practise music was played.

First off the block was Pro-Am, danced by our Pro dancers Anne Buchan and Nic Bartlem & their students. After they’d danced it was apparent that everyone was itching to get on the floor & show us what they’d got.

On to the line dance divisions & heats were danced by Division 4 Junior. It was a great competition with lots of closely fought battles on the dance floor. Following dance 1 it was time for a spot of lunch so a 25 minute recess was in order to allow everyone to grab a bite to eat. With a restaurant, Burger King, Pastry shop, Spar & Smooth stall on site everyone was spoilt for choice.

The break was closely followed by dances 2 & 3 respectively bringing us up to 5:00pm. A 45 minute break for some social dancing took place with everyone flooding Jamie with requests for right then and for the evening social later on. 5:45pm brought around the awards with some surprises & tears of elation. Everything wrapped up right on schedule at 6:30pm an hour break was needed to give everyone the chance to change & the Haven staff the opportunity to set the room for the evening.

At 7:30pm the evening social got underway. This would promise to be probably our most diverse social yet. In a unique twist to our usual set up, the room was not only open to our dancers, but was also made available to holiday makers at Haven, meaning by door open we already had a huge crowd of couples, families & groups intrigued to see what all this line dance malarkey was about. And our dancers wasted no time showing them. Requests included:

Louisiana Saturday Night, Shoes Of Another Man, Latin Crazy, Man in the Mirror, Telephonic, Cha Cha Slide, Rita’s Waltz, Coochie Bang Bang, Sister Kate, Trouble Is, Jesse James, Cha Cha Loco, Jukebox, Good Ol’ Boys, Acapella, Quarter After One, Have Fun Go Mad, Americano, Chill Factor, Tik Tok Drop, With These Eyes, NY Cha, Spotlight, Inside Your Heaven, Broken Heels, Patient Heart, Fuego, Playing With Fire, 5678, Wild Wild West, Drive Me Wild, Swing Your Chains, Ain’t Goin Down, JR Drop, Hands Up, 5,6,7,8 and Cupid Shuffle (9 Times!!!)

Phew! With the majority of requests played everyone was happy. Rob taught a fun little dance, the 16 count "Upside Down" originally choreographed to a the song of the same name by the A*Teens, but instead danced it to the Madagascar version of “I Like to Move It” which also saw not only the Haven guests get up and have a try, but the Haven staff too! He then showed them it could be danced a little more shall we say “funky” to Justin Timberlake’s “Sexyback”. The non dancers definitely had the “Oh My Gosh, this can’t be line dancing” look on their faces!

Onto more social dancing with a break at 9:30pm for the Haven show “Boogie Fun with the Allstars”!!!! A 20 minute high energetic dance routine medley to entertain the youngsters, but would you believe the dance floor was…..you guessed it, completely full of line dancers!

Followed by even more social dancing, we were treated to a live show from one of the Haven Cabaret singers. This went even further to show those non dancers in the room that line dancers really can dance to anything at the drop of a hat. She sang a variety of songs including “9 to 5” (Mojo Rhythm), “Stuck in the Middle” (Walk The Line), “Summer of 69” (Got To Be Funky), Ego (Cupid Shuffle again!). Her set was finished off nicely with The Sway to her rendition of Leona Lewis’ version of “Run” by Snow Patrol.

And would you believe it, even MORE social dancing, with a “demo” by Rob of THE BEAST, being joined halfway by some of our dancers, took us right up to midnight. It was time to say our goodbyes & take our tired feet off to bed.... or to the Galaxy Bar in some cases! We would like to thank our Masters staff for the day, the staff at the Blue Dolphin holiday complex who couldn’t have done enough for us, offer our congratulations to those who competed & extend a huge THANK YOU to everyone who attended.

Don’t forget the 8th World Dance Masters is being held in Manchester 6-8 Aug. Visit our website for information on entry, accommodation & more. 

http://www.worlddancemasters.com

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!

Midland Masters 2010

Midland Masters took place on Saturday 22^nd May at Kings Hall, Stoke-On-Trent. The day kicked off bright (very bright) and early for the team at around 08:00. The sun was beaming down all day long meaning the hall looked glorious with slits of sun shining through the window illuminating the dance floor.

Queues were forming as early as 08:45 and by doors opening time there was a queue of at least 200 people waiting to enter. With music playing, sun shining, and everybody in high spirits it looked like it was going to be a great day.

Warm-up for Pro-Am kicked off at 11:00. Unfortunately due to the heat, by the end of warm-up time our dancers and the Pro's were already sweating!! 

Judges for the day were Competition Director and Head Judge Nicola Lafferty, Jodie Seedel, Charlotte Macari and Apprentice Judging was Division 1 Dancer Lauren Forsyth. Scoring for the day was Head Scorer Sam Robins, assisted by Paul Rhoades, with Jamie Whalley as the wonderful DJ. Making up the team for the day were John and Elizabeth Lafferty on the door with Zoe Powell as floor coordinator. A well oiled machine if we do say so ourselves!!

Into the competition it was clear that the day was going to get even warmer inside the hall. Pro's led their dancers around the floor with amazing style, flare & grace. Our dancers and Pro's coped well with the heat; from Newcomer to Advanced, everyone danced fantastically.

With the Pro-Am over it was time to move to the Line Dance divisions. A small break was given for the judges and dancers to get in a final practise before donning costumes and preparing themselves for their 1^st Dance. Amazing. The standard and effort didn’t falter all day. Through to Dance 2 and 3 everyone gave it 100%. A special mention has to be given to our Primary Novice Female, Newcomer Junior Female & Division 4 Junior Female Divisions who had to dance in heats, some dancing as many as 9 times!

After a long dance of dancing it was time to hand out the awards. Lots of surprises and happiness brought the day of competition to a close. But it wasn’t the end of the day. The evening brought about a social with Charlotte Macari & Jamie Whalley. They kept everyone dancing right through the evening with teaches from both Charlotte & Lee Easton. Charlotte taught her own dance "In This Life", a 32 Count 4 Walls Intermediate dance to In This Life by Collin Raye, followed by Lee teaching his own dance “Telephonic” , a 32 Count 2 Walls Intermediate/Advanced dance to Telephone by Lady Gaga ft. Beyonce. This was loved by everyone, very fast & energetic.

New & old dances sat side by side. New favourite “Faith & Desire” followed by “The Beast” is just an example of the variety. The night was finished off by a good ol’ favourite, “Islands in the Stream” with Charlotte & Jamie performing on stage!

We hope everyone had a great day as we know we did. Congratulations to all of our dancers for your continued effort & dedication.