You actually have not answered my question but the point isn't worth pursuing.

I'm not interested in you because it appears that you do not dance. Nor am I specifically interested in your daughter. I was just curious about her absence from this forum.

I am interested in the subject of the development of young dancers because I want to see ballroom dancing grow in popularity. If I had my way, we'd teach ballroom in our public schools.

I am disappointed at your daughter's failure to find a suitable partner because that failure points up the paucity of young men willing to pursue formal dancing in the US.

As for myself, I am a 59 year old amateur lead who has beeen dancing for more than 11 years. Most of my work has been in Standard.

jj

jj, I as well.



You are correct. I do not dance, but I am very involved in dance and very knowledgeble of the dance world. If you were a competitive dancer, I think that you would find such knowledge very valuble as well as interesting.
I am quickly absorbing the ballroom/latin dance world.



It comforts me to know that you care about young dancers. Our school district does not support dance and for a period, had to have my daughter home schooled becuase they were not sympathetic to our needs when it came to my daughters dancing. High School offers more options for her, so I have her back in...and she is in an extracurricular latin dance program.

Thankyou for sharing some personal facts about yourself.

If you have the time...maybe you could take a look at these young dancers. If you chose to do so,...perhaps you can also imagine what kind of world these you dance prodigies live in.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fDmgzMA25uQ
It's the same world that my daughter lives in. The young "follow" was very fortunate to have "Kiril" available to her. If he was from L.A....he could have certainly partnered with my daughter and have been just as successful. Finding a good partner is one of the reasons my daughter did not get into ballroom/latin eary on.

P.S. My daughter knows of Kiril through her ballet comp. days. They competed in the same age division. He and his partner are the #1 ranked U.S.A. Junior Latin champs. They are from San Diego.

Back to your original question...
My daughter has a t-shirt that says
"Shut up and dance with me". LOL

Although each of the young dancers who are the focus of the video has obvious physical skills, the partnership seems to lack chemistry. Each seems to spend a lot of time dancing solos.

I'm also dismayed by the similarity of the choreography, seeing the same moves repeatedly almost without regard to the dance being performed. I see this trend even at the professional level.

I would like to see more of couple 438; they were also very good and seemed genuinely to enjoy dancing together.

The point at which Kiril and his partner split couple 438 was definitely not cool.

Because the camera focused so exclusively on the one couple, I couldn't say whether I thought that they were actually the best in that competition.

jj

jj, Great commentary. In salsa, my daughter is a fantastic turner and has a tendency to turn too much because she is great at it...but it gets boring very quickly. Kiril reminds me of my daughter. The things he is really good at and probably been praised for (too many times) makes everything else dribble out of his head. I also think that a slight ego probably causes him to dissconnect from his partner.

(I also like 438,...connected well, but I didn't think he took advantage of his "hits" enough and also had a few stability errors.) They also seemed to lack what the salsa world calls "sabor", that Kiril and his partner seem much closer to attaining.

Kiril is a bit of a celebrity, both in ballet and ballroom and that has concerned me a bit about the ballroom world. (Politics).

Added: So you think you are a star,....then you see someone like this (ballet)
I think the kid is from Europe.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ojll9w1rGW8&feature=related

The toures that the girl does at around 7:15...my daughter did the same (and near as clean) when she was 11 yrs. old at Mansur Kamaletdinov's (ex. Bolshoi director) Vaganova Summer program. She's a great ballerina...but was overlooked by the top schools because of her height. (She will top out at about 5' 3"). No one needs to tell us how brutal the dance world can be.