After a mad dash to get prepared in time we finally got in to the venue which itself is a good enough reason to go there:
The dancing was split up into two halls other wise we would have been there all weekend. The Empress ballroom was the main venue:
and the Spanish Hall contained the Beginners and Ex-Students:
The Ballroom Dancing was held in the morning, then Off Beat at lunch time (well about 2 o’clock) Latin in the afternoon and then Rock and Roll at ‘dinner time’ then the Team Match in the ‘evening’.
After this there was the Demonstration dance and then results.
We all had a great time, with dancers in all categories apart from Off Beat, which is a dance comp where the steps can be anything except official steps from Ballroom or Latin dances.
Since this year is the 50th year IVDA has been running they gave life time achievement prizes and our Teachers Linda and Robert Bellinger got a present for teaching University of Southampton for more than 20 years. We would not be where we are today with out them.
As it was we had dancers final in Beginner’s Waltz, Quickstep
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| Melissa and Gareth, in pale blue |
and Cha-Cha,
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| Peter and Claire, in turquoise. |
Intermediate Latin:
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| Jon and Catri, in black and green. |
Advanced Ballroom and Latin:
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| Alex and Kirsty, in purple and leopard print. |
Ex-Student Novice Ballroom and Latin:
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| Nick and Jess, in black, and Jo and Becky, in pinky red. |
And adding up each University’s teams positions a ranking was formed and we beat our previous highest ranking by 3 whole places!!
We are now ranked 5th highest University in the country. We even have photographic evidence to prove it 😀
With all of this dancing going on the competition didn’t end till at least 11:30 and we weren’t out of there till gone 12:30. (lots of team dresses to be accounted for etc)
The next day we had a nice lie in :p as breakfast was put back to 09:00 and we got the coach at about 10:15 for a lovely journey back to Southampton. This time the coach and mini bus arrived within 20-30mins of each other.
Thank you to everyone from SUBLDS for an amazing weekend 😀
