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Three days of dancing at Lombok Dancesport Festival
Winning dance: Dancer Bintang Grendis from Lombok performs an expressive and creative solo dance in the traditional dance category
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span class="inline inline-center">Winning dance: Dancer Bintang Grendis from Lombok performs an expressive and creative solo dance in the traditional dance category. Based upon the Ramayana, her Lord Hanuman performance gained her second place.
The Lombok International Dancesport Festival, now in its 10th year, was another three days crammed full of competitive dancing, tension and flamboyant costumes.
With well over 1,000 competitors drawn from all over Asia, and as far away as Ukraine, the UK and Italy, the event last weekend was a truly global experience.
The event kicked off early on Friday with the Bima Ballroom at Sentosa Resort Senggigi hosting the International Dance Asia (IDA) Artistic and Freestyle dance competition, which featured solo, duo and team performances.
As to be expected with the home advantage, traditional Indonesian performers dominated and a Balinese troupe took the top honors with an exceptional legong condong. Performed with precision, elegance and poise, it was a popular and well-deserved win.
The international troupes pushed hard though and a belly dance by a Malaysian group and a Thai classical dance were well placed by the experienced international panel of adjudicators.
The afternoon session was all about freestyle and featured some quite extraordinary hip-hop and electric boogie. Perhaps drawn by Saturday's IODI Kejurnas X (Indonesian National Championship), the first time it has ever been held outside Java, the competition was fierce and the standard very high.
Saturday's national championship saw competitors from 17 different provinces take in 55 different events, many with multiple heats. From the Solo Beginners' cha-cha cha, rumba and jive at 9 a.m. to the grand final of the Amateur Latin at 10 p.m., the intensity and skill of the performers was unrelenting.
This year's championship held extra importance for the competitors, as the quadrennial National Games (PON) will be held in 2016 and dancesport has been reinstated. For dancers to enter PON, they must have competed in the 2015 IODI Kejurnas X in Lombok.
Sunday was a day to celebrate international dance with the IDA Ballroom and Latin competition finals. A host of beginners, novices, seniors and pre-am from all around the world danced for the coveted titles.
Special mention goes to British couple Rebecca Scott and Lloyd Perry, only 17 years of age, who took the event by storm with an impressive set of performances in their first visit to Indonesia and wins in several categories. Their electric jive show dance brought the house down and set the scene perfectly for the finale, featuring the heats and grand finals of the Professional Ballroom and Latin categories.
'Coming from Wales, the heat and humidity is the hardest thing to deal with,' Lloyd commented as the couple received their trophy from organizer Marcel de Rijk, who is Puri Mas Boutique Resorts and Spa owner and chief sponsor.
Couples from Japan and Hong Kong took all the accolades in the Professional Ballroom categories, with the quickstep of Japan's Go and Kelko Hashimoto being particularly memorable for its speed and grace.
The event's crownjew and the closing competition was the Professional Latin dances, which attracted large field of international challengers. For sheer ferocity and pace, this is the penultimate category.
The overall winners, from Ukraine, were Dmytro Wloch and Ekaterina Krysanova, whose samba and paso doble were sensational. They did not have it all their own way, however, with Wook Lee and Jenny Song from South Korea pushing them particularly hard in the rumba and jive.
The festival was once again made possible by the expertise and efforts of de Rijk, who, along with his team, the support of a huge international panel of adjudicators and the Santosa Villas and Resort Senggigi, Lombok, staged a memorable festival for competitors and spectators alike.
' Photos by Chris O'Connor
