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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

WDC vs WDSF poster

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.

List of World Ballroom Dance Champions
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
The first publicly available video of World Championship is dated 1959 when Desmond Ellison and Brenda Winslade from England won the competition.
Waltz by Christopher Hawkins and Hazel Newberry, 2002 – 2004 World Champions.
Arunas Bizokas and Katusha Demidova are ballroom dancing champions since 2009. It was first time when dancers from USA won the Champion title. See their performance at Donnie Burns CUP 2016 Final.
Arunas Bizokas and Katusha Demidova dancing Tango at Dance Stories 2013.

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.

List of World Latin Dance Champions
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
Walter Laird & Lorraine Reynolds dancing Samba at World Championship 1963.
Michał Malitowski & Joanna Leunis (2008 – 2009 champions) dancing Rumba, 2012.
Paso Doble by Riccardo Cocchi and Yulia Zagoruychenko (2010 – 2015 champions) at Saint-Petersburg Dance Holidays 2016.
Riccardo Cocchi and Yulia Zagoruychenko dancing Cha-Cha-Cha.

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.

List of World 10 Dance Champions
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
Eldar Dzhafarov and Anna Sazina (2012 champions) dance Quickstep.
Nikolay Govorov and Eugeniya Tolstaya (2015 champions) dancing English Waltz at Russian Open Dance Festival.

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.

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  • P.O. Box: 391484, Dubai, UAE

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