2019 GrandSlam Series kicks off at Bucharest – in collaboration with SWAROVSKI
2019/03/14
The 2019 WDSF GrandSlam Series journal will have its first chapter written at the inaugural leg in Bucharest, Romania, this weekend. Three months have passed since the 2018 GrandSlam Final, and although most of the couples have started their competition year in January or February, this is the first big event and the place where the top couples will meet again. The floor is ready for the World Standard and Latin Superstars!
The GrandSlam partnership between SWAROVSKI – the leading producer of precision-cut crystal for fashion, jewellery and home décor – and the World DanceSport Federation (WDSF) goes into its fifth year. SWAROVSKI crystals continue to bring sparkle and shimmer effect to costumes and jewelry across the entire world of dance, and the WDSF GrandSlam has further consolidated its position as the leading competition series in DanceSport.
The partnership with Flodance continues in Bucharest. The LIVE stream through Flodance.com from the quarterfinal onwards begins at 18:55 CET on Saturday and at 18:45 CET on Sunday. By subscribing to the Flodance.com platform for an amount of 12,50 USD/month (provided you commit to a one-year subscription), or alternatively subscribing monthly for 30 USD, you are able to enjoy the all the best parts of the events live, from the cozyness of your own home, work place or, for example, together with your friends at their house.
We Dance Together – The Best Sports Documentary Award 2019
2019/03/14
The 3rd Edition of the RushDoc International Documentary Festival has awarded WDSF documentary ”We Dance TOGETHER” the Best Sports Documentary Award 2019.
It is the second WDSF DanceSport production by award-winning director Pedro Toro, a WDSF Communications team member since 2012. With his previous film ”Do Your Dance” he won the first prize award at the Baku International Sport Film Festival in 2014.
The one-hour documentary tells the story of some of the 150 dancers who represented their sport in the 2017 World Games. ”We Dance TOGETHER” portrays the exceptional dancers in their respective quests for gold. Their rhythms may be different, the attires too, but at the core it is all one and the same. They all dance TOGETHER!
The announcement of the 2019 WDSF World Breaking Championship has created positive vibes within our National Member Bodies (NMB) as national qualifiers have been organised and many more are expected to be held in March.
Russian National Member body, the FDSARR, has put together the Russian National Breaking Championship in Kazan in the beginning of March. The Russian National Breaking Team for Nanjing will be nominated based on the results of the qualifiying event, and the team will also represent Russian Federation in other WDSF’s international Breaking events.
Other National Member Bodies, which have scheduled their qualifiers for the 2019 WDSF World Breaking Championships include for example: Argentina, Austria, Colombia, Germany and Guatemala. The German Breaking Championship will be organised on March 24th in Aalen, qualifying the winners and the runners-up from Germany to participate in the World Championship.
And, that is not all, there are some National Member Bodies who have already selected their representatives and are about to send the entry forms to the Chinese DanceSport Federation way ahead of the deadline.
This is a true story about trying, having nothing to lose, and succeeding. And it cost nothing! Finnish Dance Sport Federation employee tells in her own words how they managed to get the whole 2019 GrandSlam Series, twelve programmes, out on the national broadcasting company TV channel.
”I sent an email to my contact person at Yle in January, meaning to offer the 2019 Grand Slam Series for broadcasting in Finland. We had the first leg of the Series in Finland for four years, 2015-2018, and Yle was broadcasting the leg every year on their channel. At the same time it meant my contact person was already familiar with the event and the Series. So it was an easy approach and I just wanted to try; it wouldn’t cost anything for me, or the Federation, but if succeeded it would answer to many of our member clubs’ complaints and worry about almost zero visibility of DanceSport on national media.
I checked the calendar of the events, wrote down the dates and locations and carefully formulated my message in a way it would be short and simple, but including all the details Yle would need to make the decision. It helped a lot to have the 2018 GrandSlam Series brochure available. Although some of the contents was already out-of-date, I attached the old brochure anyway as I wanted to do this as early as possible before the 2019 Series would kick off.
I emphasized the high quality of the Series and the possibility to follow the best Standard and Latin dancing in the World as a series for the whole year, and offered help with finding one or two experts to help the commentator for narrating the programmes. My contact replied almost immediately, thanked for the offer and said they would start considering.
We had been negotiating about broadcasting some national events earlier, but the budget had been a major factor for the unsuccessful negotiations, for both sides. That is why I thought the offer from WDSF Communications might be a true door-opener and worth trying. As soon as I received the updated presentation for the 2019 GrandSlam Series I forwarded it to my contact. It included the updated information of the transfer costs, which were the only costs, and the amount was almost nothing compared to what they would get for the price.
These few emails totally paid off, my contact informed that they would show the whole series of 12 programmes during the year! But I had to keep quiet for a while, until the contract would be signed. It was so difficult to keep my mouth shut, as this would mean we would get more DanceSport on Finnish television than ever before! This would be a huge possibility for our member clubs to bring in new, interested and potential customers to their groups and events. This could start a DanceSport boom in Finland and I could already imagine the effect it would have on every media coverage on a national level.
Today, the contract between Yle and WDSF has been signed and we were finally allowed to announce this amazing news to our members. Only time will tell how the viewer ratings turn out and how the member clubs have taken advantage of the huge coverage during the year.
It was certainly worth trying, the support material by the WDSF Communications was brilliant, and I couldn’t be happier about this on behalf of all Finnish DanceSport fans and lovers. I sincerely want to thank and appreciate Yle for their interest on DanceSport and giving the Finnish viewers a chance to get a close look into the hard work and glamour of our beautiful sport.”