Warwick continue success streak at Dance Nationals

After some stellar results at a recent regional competition in Birmingham, Warwick’s Latin and Ballroom society were feeling the pressure to match their success at the Inter-Varsity National Championships that took place in Blackpool on March 3rd. With such a challenge ahead of us, we stocked up on pasta and journeyed up to the Mecca of Ballroom dancing with our game faces on.

Over 30 universities were in attendance, making this one of the toughest competition on our calendar, but Warwick University still managed to make Beginners, Novice, Intermediate and Advanced Finals in both Ballroom and Latin. One of our Beginner couples placed 4th in the Waltz, especially remarkable since this was only their second competition together. We also had Beginner couples make the Quickstep and Jive semi-finals. Elsewhere, the Novice Northern’s champions Ian McDonnell and Jessica Green once again burned up the dance floor, achieving 3rd in Waltz and Quickstep.

Intermediate couple Matt Hoather and Claire Hall danced their last student IVDC competition together and after a year of admirable success once again won medals for their Ballroom. We also saw our first Advanced Latin couple compete together; Tanya Bencheva and Armando de Viena, placing 5th, an amazing achievement considering their limited practice together. Three of Warwick’s ex-students also did brilliantly in their category, finished 4th, 6th and 7th, respectively.

As if this wasn’t enough, the Warwick A Team finished the highest ever in our history by making the Division 1 Play-Off Finals, whilst B and C Teams came 6th in their categories, both qualifying into Division 1 and therefore automatically beating several University’s teams in Division 2. In overall-combined team results we finished 6th out of the over 30 universities competing, including Oxford, Cambridge, Imperial and Liverpool University, all of whom wielded strong teams.

Our Offbeat performance ‘The Toys are Back in Town’ also gained 2nd place, although general consensus agrees that the team were robbed of 1st after such an original and well-executed concept. Kudos to Performance Co-ordinator Sorcha Exworthy and Choreographer Matt Hoather for creating such a fantastic routine and consistently doing well by Warwick in the Offbeat category. There’ll be a chance for Warwick University to catch a repeat of this dancing spectacular at the Warwick Student Arts Festival (WSAF) 2012 in Term 3.

All in all, after 12 hours of dancing on the day and even more spent practising routines and technique, Warwick Dancesport‘s team’s hard work and dedication paid off. But alas, no rest for the wicked, already we look forward to our Manchester Spring competition where we hope to round off an exciting and successful year for the club with more medals and merriment.