2014 Chile Open
The President of the Federación Deportiva Chilena de Baile Deportivo, Mr Mauricio Vergara, was very proud to welcome participating couples from 8 different countries: Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Bolivia, Ecuador, Peru, Mexico, Columbia.
It was exciting to see the couples in different disciplines and age groups: in Adult, Senior and Youth. Some of them quite experienced, some at the very beginning of their DanceSport career, but all of them enthusiastic about their dancing.
The first WDSF competition in Chile took place back in 2009. Around 17 couples from 4 countries competed at that time.
Since then the WDSF Membership Commission concentrated on the development of DanceSport in the South and Latin American countries. Just to mention a few names of well known trainers who worked hard to educate trainers as well as adjudicators and to improve the level of the dancers in the region: Jesus Rubio, Juan Cayuela, Siscu Perez, Isaac Rovira, Anastasia Maximova, Eva Angues, Dani Curto. Blanca Ribas travelled for quite a few months through many countries on the South American continent, worked with dancers in all age groups, helping them with their basic movement and their choreographies. She reported about the WDSF development initiatives in the Latin American countries in a series of articles.
All this work has paid off and the result is reflected in increasing numbers of couples and the nations they represent. For the past few years, we regularly saw couples from Latin America competing in WDSF World Championships.
This time, too, couples participating in the Chile Open had the opportunity to work with trainers Paolo Bosco and Sergej Milicija right after the competition.
Anothe milestone in the developement of DanceSport in Latin America is reached today, 6 December, when it will feature as a demonstration sport on the programme of Bolivarian Games are held in the city of Trujillo, PER.
These games are a multi-sport event that takes place every four years and is open to athletes from the six countries that achieved their independence thanks to Simon Bolivar. Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Panama, Peru and Venezuela are grouped in the Bolivarian Sports Organisation, a sub-organisation of Pan-American Sports Organisation (PASO).
Who knows, DanceSportr featuring - however peripherically - in the context of these games and PASO, could lead to it being considered for Pan-American Games in the future.
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