2011 WDC World Super Series - Asian Open Professional Dance Championships (ADC Open Dance Tour - Tokyo, Japan)

This was my 3rd year at the ADC Open Dance Tour and I was still impressed by the efficiency of the Japanese in everything that they do. I arrived on a beautiful sunny Saturday with temperatures of 2 degrees - perfect for someone coming from a hot hot country. Unfortunately, the Prince Hotel did not have my room ready yet but I had the good fortune to arrive at the same time as Wantanee from Thailand and we both met Aleena Tan from Singapore in the hotel lobby so we had lunch together to while away the time till the rooms were ready.

The welcome dinner on Saturday night served an excellent 4 course European meal and most of us polished off our plates. I was delighted to see many of the judges that I had worked with before during the first two tours and we all greeted each other warmly. Two fellow Malaysians were also present at the dinner - Dato Dr Henry Ooi and Alex Lim, so I felt quite at home. After the meal, we were given quick briefings by the organizer - Mr Isao Nakagawa, and the chief adjudicator - Mr Robin Short. The tour schedule for 2012 was also announced and Mr Geoffrey Chun of Korea also announced his plans for a championship later this year.

The day of the competition dawned bright & sunny, which was a good thing as many of the judges were a little jet lagged and I'm sure the sun made things feel a lot more cheerful. The first batch of judges pushed off from the hotel at 7:45am to prepare for the competition which started at 8:30am. The schedule was really tight and the working committee kept everyone on their toes to keep to the time table. Thought there were only a total of 6 events it took a total of 12 hours to complete the competition. The event with the most entries was the Asian Open Professional Latin with 117 entries! Here are the details.

PANEL OF ADJUDICATORS

Mr Robin Short - UK (Chief Adjudicator)

Dato Dr Henry Ooi - Malaysia

Mr William Bae - Korea

Mr Geoffrey Chun - Korea

Mr Hannes Emrich - UK

Ms Hazel Fletcher - UK

Ms Yumi Futatsumori - Japan

Mr Massimo Giorgianni - Italy

Mr Marcus HIlton, MBE - UK

Mr Lei Chi Hong - Macau

Mr Anthony Hurley - UK

Mr Soernarko Josodihardjo - Indonesia

Ms Wanthanee Kanchana - Thailand

Mr John Kimmins - USA
Mr Kenny Kwan - Macau

Mr David Lee - Taiwan

Mr Alan Li - Macau

Mr Alex Lim - Malaysia

Mr Sammy Liu - Taiwan

Mr Ariel Llanillo - Philippines

Mr Satoru Morikawa - Japan

Ms Hiromi Nagai - Japan

Ms Hazel Newberry, MBE - UK

Mr Ferenc Polai - Austria

Mr Steve Powell - UK

Mr Paul Richardson - UK

Mr Svein Rotvold - Norway

Mr Espen Salberg - Norway

Mr Kenji Seto - Japan

Mr Michael Stylianos - UK

Mr Yoshimitsu Suzuki - Japan
Mr Takuhide Takeda - Japan

Ms Allena Tan - Singapore

Mr Manfred Wang - China

Mr Kenny Welsh - UK

Mr Dharshan Wijesooriya - Sri Lanka

Mr Ji Xiaoming - China

THE CHAMPIONS

Asian Open Professional Std - #99  Arunas Bizokas & Katusha Demidova - USA

Asian Open Professional Latin - #123  Riccardo Cocchi & Yulia Zagoruychenko - USA

Amateur Open Std - #13  Andrea Ghigiarelli & Sara Andracchio - England

Amateur Open Latin - #30  Jurij & Jagoda Batagelj - Slovenia

Asian Closed Std - #59  Alex & Melody Hou - Taiwan

Asian Closed Latin - #3  Ning Lu & Ding Fang Zhang - China

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Congratulations to all the champions!!

The next leg of the tour will be in Taipei, Taiwan on the 28th February 2011. See you all there.