World Dance Champions
It’s always pleasant to watch the best performers in any sports: it can be basketball, swimming or martial arts. But you get maximum pleasure and excitement by enjoying the best dance performances. A dance, as a natural mixture of music and body movement, thrills through the whole show and reveals harmony, beauty and ideal mutual understanding, coordination and cooperation with the partner. No matter how you and the dances are related: whether you’re just a spectator, confident dancer or just an amateur who begins taking the dance classes, it’s really worth watching best of the best! For students of dance schools or people who enjoy dancing themselves, it’s a good example to analyze and compare the best dance moves and figures, and probably use them as inspiration for own further self-development and sharpening of personal dance skills.
Dance Champions Classification
The champions have near the same classification that ballroom dancing usually has (Ballroom Dances: Types, Classifications, Competitions). First of all, there are two head organizations that have own rules for dance competitions:
- World Dance Council (WDC), founded in 1950 in Edinburgh, primarily focused on professional competitive dancing.
- World DanceSport Federation (WDSF), formerly the International DanceSport Federation (IDSF). Founded in 1957 in Germany, its main focus was on amateur dancer’s league.
Nowadays both organizations position themselves as international global bodies that regulate competitive dancing, both professional and amateur. Conflict of interest make them rivals and each has its own competitions, regulations, rules and champions list. Apart from WDC and WDSF championships, there are other competitions, e.g. International Latin American Dance Championship.
We will provide a list of champions of WDC, because we consider it to be more popular and our dance studio participates in WDC events, such as dance competitions. The WDC champions are divided by programs: Standard, Latin and 10 Dance. So the champions are named accordingly.
World Ballroom Dance Champions
The WDC previously used Modern (traditionally British name) or Standard terms to describe this type of champions that cover the following dances: English Waltz, Foxtrot, Quickstep, Tango and Viennese Waltz. Today it’s referred to as simply Ballroom Champions.
The first World Championship is considered to take place in 1909 in Paris. Organized by Camille de Rhynal, a dancer and choreographer, it was a great success. The event gained very positive reviews and was kindly welcomed by Europeans who were curious to meet dancers from the “New World” (USA).
The first championship competitions were completely different from what we have nowadays. Still they were exciting to watch. First of all, there was no differentiation between the Amateur and Professional dancers. It was the World Championship 1911 in Paris, when the first Pro/Am format of competition appeared, which meant a pro and an amateur danced together. Moreover, the couples were not divided by representing country, i.e. each partner in a couple could represent a different country. It was possible to get World champion per dance and only since the World Championship of 1922 in London, it was for the first time to have an all-round competition in all the existing dances.
The competitions were held annually, except the period of World War II when the competitions were suspended from 1940 till 1946. Most competitions were won by dancers from Great Britain, country with very strong ballroom dancing schools.
| Year | Couple | Country |
|---|---|---|
| 1922 | Victor Silvester & Phyllis Clarke | England |
| 1923 | no contest held | |
| 1924, 1925 | Maxwell Stewart & Barbara Miles | England |
| 1926 | Maxwell Stewart & Pat Sykes | England |
| 1927 | Edward Blunt & Doris Germai | England |
| 1928 | Maxwell Stewart & Pat Sykes | England |
| 1929 | Herbert Jemull & Gerti Hepprich | Germany |
| 1930 | Maxwell Stewart & Pat Sykes | England |
| 1931 | Arthur Milner & Norma Cave | England |
| 1932 | Marcel & Mme Chapoul | France |
| 1933 | Sydney Stern & Mae Walmsey | England |
| 1934 - 1936 | Marcel & Mme Chapoul | France |
| 1937 - 1939 | Arthur Norton & Pat Eaton | England |
| 1947 | Victor Barrett & Doreen Freeman | England |
| 1948 - 1950 | Bob Henderson & Eileen Henshall | England |
| 1959 | Desmond Ellison & Brenda Winslade | England |
| 1960 | Bill and Bobbie Irvine | Scotland |
| 1961 | Harry Smith-Hampshire & Doreen Casey | England |
| 1962 - 1965 | Bill & Bobbie Irvine | Scotland |
| 1966 | Peter Eggleton & Brenda Winslade | England |
| 1967 - 1968 | Bill & Bobbie Irvine | Scotland |
| 1969 – 1970 | Peter Eggleton & Brenda Winslade | England |
| 1971 - 1972 | Anthony Hurley & Fay Saxton | England |
| 1973 - 1980 | Richard & Janet Gleave | England |
| 1981 - 1985 | Michael & Vicky Barr | England |
| 1986 - 1988 | Stephen & Lindsey Hillier | England |
| 1989 | John Wood & Anne Lewis | England |
| 1990 - 1998 | Marcus & Karen Hilton | England |
| 1999 | Luca & Loraine Baricchi | England |
| 2000 | Augusto Schiavo & Caterina Arzenton | Italy |
| 2001 | Luca & Loraine Baricchi | England |
| 2002 - 2004 | Christopher Hawkins & Hazel Newberry | England |
| 2005 - 2008 | Mirko Gozzoli & Alessia Betti | Italy |
| 2009 - 2015 | Arunas Bizokas & Katusha Demidova | USA |
World Latin Dance Champions
The competition comprises five dances: Rumba, Samba, Paso Doble, Cha-Cha-Cha and Jive.
Official World Championships have been held annually since 1959. Earlier some ballroom dancing competitions sometimes included one or two Latin dances in the same competition as Standard ballroom dances. The most frequent winners of the World Latin Dance Championship are British dancers, however, things changed in the past 17 years. Currently the dancers from USA 5 times won the champion title.
| Year | Couple | Country |
|---|---|---|
| 1960 | Roger & Micheline Ronnaux | France |
| 1961 | Bill and Bobbie Irvine | Scotland |
| 1962 - 1964 | Walter Laird & Lorraine Reynolds | England |
| 1965 | Walter & Marianne Kaiser | Switzerland |
| 1966 | Bill & Bobbie Irvine | England |
| 1967 | Rudolf & Mechthild Trautz | Germany |
| 1968 | Bill & Bobbie Irvine | England |
| 1969 - 1971 | Rudolf & Mechthild Trautz | Germany |
| 1972 | Wolfgang & Evelyn Opitz | Germany |
| 1973 - 1975 | Hans-Peter & Ingeborg Fischer | Austria |
| 1976 | Peter Maxwell & Lynn Harman | England |
| 1977 - 1981 | Alan & Hazel Fletcher | England |
| 1982 - 1983 | Espen & Kirsten Salberg | Norway |
| 1984 - 1996 | Donnie Burns & Gaynor Fairweather | Scotland/England |
| 1997 | Hans-Reinhard Galke & Bianca Schreiber | Germany |
| 1998 | Donnie Burns & Gaynor Fairweather | Scotland/England |
| 1999 - 2007 | Bryan Watson & Carmen Vincelj | South Africa/Germany |
| 2008 - 2009 | Michał Malitowski & Joanna Leunis | Poland |
| 2010 - 2015 | Riccardo Cocchi & Yulia Zagoruychenko | USA |
World 10 Dance Champions
The World Championships for Ten Dance appeared in 1980. The competition covers the five International Ballroom (Standard) dances: a href="/dances/english-waltz">English Waltz, Foxtrot, Quickstep, Tango and Viennese Waltz, along with the five International Latin Dances: Rumba, Samba, Paso Doble, Cha-Cha-Cha and Jive.
| Year | Couple | Country |
|---|---|---|
| 1980 – 1981, 1983 - 1985 | David Sycamore & Denise Weavers | Great Britain |
| 1986 | Marcus & Karen Hilton | Great Britain |
| 1987 | Michael Hull & Patsy Hull-Krogull | Germany |
| 1988 | Raymond & Gunn Myhrengen | Norway |
| 1989 - 1990 | Michael Hull & Patsy Hull-Krogull | Germany |
| 1991 - 1992 | Horst & Andrea Beer | Germany |
| 1993 | Martin & Alison Lamb | Great Britain |
| 1994 | Bo & Helle Loft Jensen | Denmark |
| 1995 - 1996 | Kim & Cecilie Rygel | Norway |
| 1997 | Gary & Diana McDonald | USA |
| 1998 | Michael Hull & Mirjam Zweijsen | Germany |
| 1999 - 2002 | Alain Doucet & Anik Jolicoeur | Canada |
| 2003 | Adam & Karen Reeve | Iceland |
| 2004 | Alain Doucet & Anik Jolicoeur | Canada |
| 2005 | Alessandro Garofolo & Annamaria Bassano | Italy |
| 2006 | Stefano Fanasca & Michaela Battisti | Italy |
| 2007 | Sergej Diemke & Katerina Timofeeva | Germany |
| 2008 - 2009 | Gherman Mustuc & Iveta Lukosiute | USA |
| 2010 | Roman Myrkin and Natalia Biedniagina | Ukraine |
| 2011 | Nikolai Pilipenchuk & Natalia Skorikova | USA |
| 2012 | Eldar Dzhafarov & Anna Sazina | Azerbaijan |
| 2013 - 2014 | Steffen Zoglauer & Sandra Koperski | Germany |
| 2015 | Nikolay Govorov & Eugeniya Tolstaya | Russia |
The dance champions of UAE
As you can see there haven’t been any champions from the United Arab Emirates, yet! So, it’s something we believe will happen one day! Our dance studio located in Dubai, offers various dance lessons for adults and kids. Besides, we provide special training programs and prepare for dance competitions, too! Mainly we focus on Pro/Am dance competitions when one partner in a couple is an amateur (our student) and another is a professional dancer (usually a member of our dance school academic staff: dance instructor, teacher or choreographer). All our students who participated at such events always were highly appreciated by the jury and achieved top rankings (read more). So, if you live in Dubai or you plan to visit Dubai for some period of time for vacation or for a business trip, you are kindly welcome in our studio! Click here to contact us and schedule your dance lesson right now! We have group dance classes and private lessons with individual educational program and time table. We will share our recommendations, answer all your questions and give you some suggestions regarding the dance courses to make the whole process easy, comfortable and effective for you.