Why was there a meeting of world champions in Kurhaus?

The combination of a lavish dance night and dazzling performances by elite couples and lineups from today’s dance scene remains unique and more popular than ever. Tickets for the World Dance Gala (WTG) at Kurhaus Baden-Baden, which sold out relatively early, speak about this.

This time too, Baden-Baden Events, led by Production Manager Martina Gotovac, once again launched various fireworks and entertainment. This also included Marcus Brock, the popular WTG presenter and known almost from the beginning, who led the evening with confidence and courage and provided interesting behind-the-scenes insights into the dance athletes through short interviews.

This year’s program began with a Latin formation by eighteen children and young people from the Müller Dance School in Rastatt. Ralf Müller and Olga Müller-Omelchenko, among the four-time world champions in Latin American dance, officially ended their active competitive sport at WTG 2000.

Since then, they have run a second-generation dance school and have successfully trained dance enthusiasts of all ages, including their two sons. Tom Mueller is already following in his parents’ footsteps. Together with his partner Lea Serban, he won the national championship title in the over-fifteen age group a year ago and was promoted to the highest German starting category, Youth A. His eight-year-old brother Len performed a break-dance routine to enthusiastic applause from the audience at the Kurhaus Baden-Baden.

The Latin diacritics of Green-Gold Bremen is the measure of everything

For many years, the Latin A-Team formation of the Green-Gold Club Bremen has been the standard in Latin dance at the national and international level. Twelve World Cup titles, three European Championships and fifteen German Championship titles speak about this. The audience was amazed by her choreography. Also from the presentation of the standard formation of the first team of the first dance club Ludwigsburg. This system was launched in 1983, and with eleven world championship titles under its belt, it remains the most successful standard formation in the world.

The pair, Dusan Dragovic and Valeria Ajekyan, who compete for England, became professional world champions in standard dance last year. And they are right, as they demonstrated at the ceremony. They currently live in Hong Kong and constantly travel around the world. For WTG they came from New Zealand. Incidentally, the couple took home the World Cup scepter from Domaine Krabie and Natasha Carabi from Bad Homburg, who danced at WTG in 2021.

Italians Aniello “Nino” Langella and Andra Fidelite from Lithuania have had great success with the Latin American dances samba, cha-cha-cha, rumba, paso doble and jive. They have been dancing together since 2016, are now married, and are the top Latin couple in Italy and ranked third in the world.

The rock ‘n’ rollers of the re-mastered acrobatic formation from Anzing, which brought home the German championship title in 2022, demonstrated acrobatic elements at the highest level in the Kurhaus. “Snakes of Medusa” was the name of the show performed by 24 dancers from the Jazzlights formation from Bergisch Gladbach.

They won the bronze medal at the World Dance Championships in Croatia in 2022. The Munich jazz group from the old RTSF club, specializing in dances from the 1920s to the 1940s, brought power and pure joy to life. This means that the Charleston, Lindy Hop, Balboa and Shag are at their best.

Julian Sanchez and Bruna Estelita of Argentina recently became world champions in the Argentine tango, which has been a UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage since 2009. Just one year later, flamenco was also listed as an Intangible Cultural Heritage by UNESCO. Pablo Egea from Spain danced to this Andalusian emotion in a breathtaking way.

There was an eight-time world champion at Discofox

Eight-time Discovox world champion Igor Pokasanev was actually supposed to perform with Virginia Lesniak, a police officer at her day job. But she was called back due to major surgery. Renata Lucien, winner of the Let’s Dance award from 2021, stepped in to dance with him the standard rendition of “The Little Mermaid.” It’s a real service of friendship, because she’s six months pregnant.

Brothers Emanuele, Leonardo D’Angelo and Tommaso Maria Parazzoli come from Italy as a tap dancing trio. The legendary Fred Astaire would have been happy with them.