During the worldwide pandemic due to Covid-19 with most countries gone into lock down, Ireland was no different. Our dance classes – cancelled. Our lessons – cancelled. Our practice sessions cancelled. Our national annual DanceSport competitions – you guessed it, cancelled!

We at the Wojtek Potaszkin Dance Academy had to learn to operate very differently very quickly, along with dance studios across the globe with lessons, classes and workshops now being held online. Now all we were missing was a competition to prepare for, could an online Ballroom and Latin dance competition work??

These two gentlemen believed it would, Mr Igor Gutovskyi and Mr Benjamin Hou together with Flymark.com put together the first Live Online Open to the World Grand Prix series of competitions.  The Grand Prix was a series of 3 competitions held online across three weekends. Competitors would register for their events online via the Flymark website, the competition itself would be held through Zoom and be broadcast LIVE on YouTube. Our dancers were delighted to be invited to enter this ground-breaking event.

Over the course of the three competitions we were lucky to have such a prestigious panel of adjudicators including our very own principal coach and WDSF adjudicator, Wojtek Potaszkin.

Adjudicators

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With lots of events available to enter, from juvenile to adults, all our students had a fantastic opportunity to showcase their talents on a world stage, albeit from their own homes. This Grand Prix series brought so much excitement (and some stress!) to our households and of course that old familiar smell of hairspray in the morning 😉 Mams and Dads cleared out rooms of furniture to transform them into dance floors. We had people dance in their living rooms, kitchens, garages, bedrooms, hallways, gardens, no floor was safe! It was such an exciting thing for us to take part in from home during a time where home was the only place we could go.

Justin

Amy

Filip

Katherine

Conor

Madison

Ava

Lara

Lucy

Olivia

As the events were broadcast live on YouTube it gave our families and friends, many of whom we had not seen in a long time, the chance to tune in and watch us compete and support us and one thing our WPDA family know how to do is show the best support to each other!

We are immensely proud of our students who gave it their all in this new way of competing and held their own against some of the top dancers from around the world. They battled through many rounds making some fantastic finals and coming away with some great titles.

A special mention to our Conor Shuo Yu winning the overall Juvenile 2 boy Grand Prix series title.

Conor

Champion

Results:

We hope that this new way of learning and competing can continue and we look forward to future online events. Although miles apart our combined love of DanceSport kept us together and made us stronger!

Sinead

Lauren

Breen

Gemma

Robyn

Nicole

Amelia

Laura

Madison and Nicole

Katherine

We now look forward to the reopening of our dance studios in Palmerstown, Dublin on July 6^th, contact us for information on available classes.

For details of any classes please contact school for more information.

Location & Timetable of all classes can be found here: Contact us