Northern Climes: Northern Champs anticipated..

Northern Champs 2015

Cerco Addiction's Northern Champs - a midsummer party and dance competition combined hit the ground running last year with a three day even that many regarded with great fondness and this years was event has been keenly anticipated. It wasn't just the innovations and enthusiasm of the crew - it was in truth a different kind of championship. A championship where sitting outside with an ice cream was to be enjoyed as much the intricacies of picking a winner in Lucky Dip. Relaxed, confident and still competitive.

So there was much expected of this year's event and it brought dancers from London, Scotland, Essex, Wales and the South West so the players are set for a good battle for medals.

It started this evening (as I write at 3am) with a superlative freestyle where Sheena Assiph provided a play list of the familiar and the extraordinary. Ceroc Classics mixed with the most challenging tracks one might find. All good fun - along with a testing line dance lesson from Julie Gunn (CMJ Australia).

The line up of dancers was rather special with new and promising dancers mixing with some very familiar faces. Splitting them if they are all on top of their game will be hard.

New judges too - including Jen Hoy, Gary Stubbs and Lyndsey Bennett will need to bring their critical faculties to bear on a host of marvellous dancers.

So at 1am when we all said goodbye, it was for some a short break to be back in the hall at 9am: one can only admire the bottle of the Manchester crew who don't baulk at lost sleep.

The competition will be great tomorrow and you can still come along and buy a ticket on the door. I suspect it will be very well worth it.

S

27.6.2015

Comments

How a Competition is born - making it happen

The birth of a new competition on the Ceroc dance circuit gives me chance to talk to some of those involved to illustrate what it's all about. To kick this off I sent over a few questions to one of the key people in the drive to create Northern Championships, Jamie Stormer. Photo credit: Terry Hills Jamie is a well respected Ceroc teacher and successful competitive dancer. He works for Ceroc Addiction (which covers Shropshire, Staffordshire, Cheshire and Manchester). This area has become something of a powerhouse of competition dancing and Jamie has been instrumental in bring on new dancers to the competition circuit. A week ago Jamie was competing with great success in Ceroc UK Championships - now he's busy on the final preparations for Northern Champs which I first previewed here . The other day I asked Jamie via email a few questions about this new competition with a view to sharing them with you:- SN: How did you get the idea for Northern Champs? ...

Dance Season No 8 - Camber March 2013

I coughed and wheezed my way through this dance weekend and didn't make it to the end, surrendering to practicalities and the all too evident feeling of being at the limits of my scant energy most of the time It's the ultimate frustration starting out a dance with an intention of giving your all and then finding the energy leaves you and the opportunity is lost. I should start, therefore, with an apology to all those lovely dancers assembled on the South Coast that I didn't dance more and I didn't dance better. That said I was glad I went because the highlights were considerable and the alternatives much less interesting. And to some extent one always feel a little better as one dances. Early March is a tough time to hold an event like a weekender. The weather was bad on arrival, calm on Saturday, cold on Sunday and snowy on Monday. I was really impressed with the commitment of many of the people who work hard to make these weekenders. Stu Bassie's in...

2017 begins - two weekenders

Southport: Swing It's rather sad to see how much of a blog post written 8 months ago still rings true after a weekend at the Fylde seaside in turbulent February weather and after a sunny sojourn to the Sussex border in March. I last wrote about Southport here (last June) http://mindpokedance.blogspot.co.uk/2016/06/summer-ceroc-southport-2016.html about such matters as the Pontin's upkeep of the site which this time was I think worse for the winter lay off. Some chalets were filthy. The site was a bit of a wreck - in our block there was a cable partially rolled up at the bottom of the stairs! Sodden tissues of unknown origin scattered around the bins and bits of the shuttering on our block blew off during the stay. By contrast the chalet at Camber was in better nick except for the much missed sofa bed which suffered from an unfortunate stuffing droop similar to the one the Scottish Rugby team exhibited on the Saturday afternoon. This Southpo...

Mindpoke dance

Search This Blog