Depressed, Missing Slavik and Sergey, and Suffering TAC Headache…

Sorry no posting for the last couple of days. It took me forever to get home, first because of a several-hour-long plane delay, then over an hour-long cab wait at Port Authority (to which I took a bus from JFK). And I’m still so tired. I didn’t get much sleep the entire time I was there (in Blackpool), and it’s now really catching up with me. I’m just kind of depressed, missing Slavik Kryklyvyy and Sergey Surkov and all of my favorite Latin people…

Slavik is such a ham, as I realized for the first time this competition. The only other time I’ve seen him dance live was at U.S. Nationals in Florida last September when he competed in the open-to-the-world category, and there, he didn’t play so to the crowd since it really wasn’t his people. Here of course, everyone went completely nuts screaming and cheering the nanosecond he stepped onto the floor so he really hammed it up. How do I choose these guys? Marcelo, Jose, now this one… guess I’m just naturally attracted to a certain dancer-personality type …

Although Sergey seems more quiet, like a David Hallberg. No hamminess, no crazed fanfare, just great dancing, near flawless technique, and intense passion for his very pretty partner… It’s funny because, at one point during finals, Joanna Leunis and Michael Malitowski were dancing very close to Sergey and Melia and I could see from afar that the way Michael threw Joanna out to his right into a lunge, she was going to brush Sergey’s left side. She kind of reached out and playfully petted his left shoulder to let him know she was there, and he was so focused, as he always is, on Melia, I thought oh no, Joanna’s totally gonna disturb his concentration! He did seem a little surprised, but not too much so — obviously he’s used to dancing on a very crowded dance floor after all! After the round was over, still close to Michael and Joanna, he kind of tenderly patted her on the shoulder as well. It was cute. He seems kind of shy. Very attractive 🙂

Hehehe, do you think he’s mad at me for this pic?!?! I nearly dropped my camera when he shot me this look 🙂 Isn’t he cute — doesn’t he look kind of like Keanu Reeves?! He and Melia were meeting fans and autographing posters at the Chrisanne boutique in the shop pavilion, which I blogged about earlier, but here is a better picture. Sorry about the crappy cell phone pictures, by the way. It was the only way I could blog without worrying about an insecure wireless connection for my laptop. I’ll get a better cameraphone the next time!

Anyway, it was just so exciting to be there and I feel like none of my world favorites come to the U.S. competitions and so I don’t know now when I’ll see them again. I hate to think of having to wait another whole year… Now on top of being tired and depressed, or perhaps because of one or both of them, I have another one of these horrid headaches, which means, after the pain, days of being all woozy from the meds…

Anyway, I managed to get all of my pictures downloaded, although the captions are not all up and some names are spelled wrong and there are typos galore… all of which I plan to have fixed by this weekend, at the latest. Unfortunately the pictures this year are not as good as those last year, mainly because I couldn’t get a very good seat up close to the action, so everything is from afar, and pics of the finals in all competitions are from all the way up in the balcony, so you can hardly make out most of the dancers’ faces… It was insanely crowded, so it meant reaching up and over heads, snapping away haphazardly and hoping the picture came out okay… Another thing that kind of depressed me though I guess it shouldn’t. I should be happy that “Dancing With the Stars” and all of these shows have made ballroom dancing so popular that the number of amateur entries basically doubled and it was so crowded you could hardly move, but … I don’t know, it just meant I could hardly see any of the action.

I’m going to be talking about this likely for weeks to come, and posting things as I remember them, but here are a few more quick highlights:

Bryan Watson and Carmen taking their final ballroom floor walk en route to the judges to receive their final first-place Latin champions trophy. So sad. So many retirements this year in dance in general…

Max Kozhevnikov and Yulia Zagoruychenko being called to the floor to receive one of their two finalist awards: they placed sixth in Rhumba I think fifth in Jive. Max was so cute when their number (198) was called as finalist! He ran out onto the floor and started jumping around pounding his fists into the air like a cute little kid. Yulia ran up behind him and grabbed him from behind. He then remembered her and turned around and hugged her.

Same EXACT actions from these two:

Victor Fung and Anna Mikhed who, for the first time, made finals in Standard Ballroom in three of the four dances (excluding waltz). He ran out in his tux and tails, jumped around pounding the air excitedly, then she ran out behind him in her ballgown, and had to tap him on the back before he turned around and remembered, oh yeah my partner, she helped too, really should include her in the euphoria… Ballroom men!!!!!

It was a great Blackpool for America this year. With Anna and Victor making finals in Standard and Max and Yulia in Latin, and Jonathan Wilkins and Katusha Demidova placed second overall in Standard.

Okay, that is all for now… more later…

Also, I went to see ABT‘s Sleeping Beauty last night but will blog about it after I see it again, with another cast, later this week.