Oskar has been competing in the south of England championships with his dance partner, Lin Guo, and today when we speak he’s fresh from teaching classes at JJ Dance Studios, where he first started at the age of 12. “I first saw ballroom on TV,” he says. “I loved their grace and sophistication. I was obsessed with all the lifts, like Dirty Dancing.” He saved school lunch money and began taking lessons. Though he soon found out that lifts and acrobatic movements aren’t a part of ballroom dance styles, Oskar was enamoured. He won his very first junior competition and has gone on to place in competitions from Poland to South Africa.
Amid all the pageantry and glitz, ballroom is an endurance sport. Dancers will work through five routines consecutively. The standard ballroom style consists of the waltz, tango, foxtrot, quickstep and Viennese waltz, while the Latin competition comprises rhumba, samba, pasodoble, cha-cha-cha and jive. Before competing, couples like Oskar and Lin will train five to six times a week for up to four hours at a time: training camps, practice together and solo, group classes with competitors. Many have personal trainers. ‘Stamina practice’ simulates a competition final, with five dances back-to-back at two minutes each. “My body has to endure a serious amount on that huge Blackpool floor – it takes a toll,” says Oskar. At nearly 1,200 sq ft, the ballroom is one of the largest in the world. “I’ll think, ‘How am I going to get through this?’ Then I get this wave of calm, my body responds, and I’m at the end of the jive.”
Watching Oskar and Lin, wearing a brown dress cut away to expose her hips, is electrifying– it’s sensual, full of personality and chemistry. Oskar’s favourite is the samba. “I relate to the music the most because of my heritage,” he says. Oskar, who is Nigerian, is also the founder of Black in the Ballroom (BITB), a project driving racial diversity in the British ballroom space. “I just didn’t see the diversity I wanted to see. As African people, dance is in our DNA. I wanted to celebrate that, connect to it, create that space for people to feel embraced and safe enough to step on our floors.”
He is an example of just that, as the highest-ranking Black competitive dancer in Europe. Still, even champions have their challenges. “Jive is the killer – it comes at the end, but it’s the most energetic. The jive really separates the boys from the men,” says Oskar. The pasodoble has the clearest character: “You take on the role of a matador, your partner the bull or the cape. It is so physical yet theatrical.”
Competitions began in London clubs in the early 1920s, with a focus on simple forms like the waltz and the foxtrot. Movement was natural and understated. As the years progressed, influences from European youth cultures and America’s ragtime and jazz age began to cross the Atlantic, bringing new styles and tempos to English dancefloors. Hips began to snake, pelvises came together. The rhumba swayed onto the sprung floors by way of Cuba. The quickstep got more eccentric. These vibrant styles drew crowd enthusiasm. As competitions became more standardised in Blackpool, which became the sport’s home, more expansive, crowd-pleasing styles on the vast floor became the enduring dance du jour.
Oskar and Lin’s five-month partnership is still considered embryonic, but they have turned professional together. Many dancers share Instagram accounts and Facebook pages. They document their routines, wins, training and, sometimes, breakups. “After X brilliant years together, we have sadly come to the difficult (but mutual!) decision to part ways,” an uncoupling post will read. Competitions are hubs to scout new partners, too. “You can have something that’s really quite special,” Oskar says. “You have to be equally dedicated and perfection-pursuing.” The duo recently placed in the British National Championships final. Sights are now set on the Blackpool Dance Festival.
Mark Chilcote, 20, and Madison Ingoldsby, 19, have been dancing together for four and a half years from their Bournemouth studio, Nice n Easy. “We see a lot of each other,” says Mark. They used to compete against each other, before Maddie’s mum reached out to Mark’s to arrange a trial. “Finding a partner is one of the trickiest things,” says Maddie. “Firstly, because there are more girls than boys.”
Maddie and Mark are World U21 Ballroom champions. They compete pretty much every weekend, with May’s championships on the horizon. Serious dancers tend to compete in three main events and two world championships annually. The duo will spend the next few weeks taking lessons, doing stamina training and forensically analysing recordings of their routine to work out the kinks. “I’m hard on myself,” says Maddie. “I’m a big overthinker. Having a partner that supports you and takes you out of your own head helps. Mark keeps me chill.”
“It’s an interesting world as a young person,” Maddie adds. “Everything has to fit this perfect image. You’re playing a character. It’s mentally and physically exhausting. The massive ballgowns and make-up help! The craziness of competing helps, too.”
“I’m an expressive person – and on the dancefloor, nothing else matters. This is our Wimbledon” Mark, 20, dancer
“You become a persona. It’s a world that can feel small and massive – like Narnia, and the competition is like walking through the wardrobe.” Watching Maddie and Mark perform an elastic rhumba, Maddie in an oil-slick dress and hip-length ponytail, their bodies tracing each other’s contours to the syncopated beat, you feel the fantasy.
But does ballroom’s traditional – and seemingly unchanging – format feel stuffy for its Gen Z dancers? “It’s been going for 100 years,” says Mark. “We’re young, but I feel very connected to it. There is history, tradition and technique you’re tapping into that you can make your own. I’m an expressive person – and on the dancefloor, nothing else matters. This is our Wimbledon. The pressure is real for Blackpool. Blackpool is our home for a lot of the year.”
Life becomes monastic during dance season; social lives go out the window. “My friends will ask, ‘Are you alive?’” says Maddie. “It’s like, ‘Oh yeah, I’m still dancing.’” The agony and ecstasy of competition are accepted with equal fervour, for a shot at stardom. “You make a lot of sacrifices, but ballroom is a love for life.”
I find myself reaching for this fantasy at Dancesport International in Croydon as I try to shimmy into a duck-egg blue ballroom gown, intensely rhinestoned across its nude-illusion back and sleeves, with a fishtail skirt that sprouts blue feathers. Moreso, I feel stressed that I’m going to amputate this gown – one can fetch up to £2,000 – from its jewels and epidermal growths.
“We’re an extreme performance world,” affirms Gerald Schwanzer, a former dancer now working as managing director of DSI, costumiers to the ballroom world. DSI works with the BBC’s Strictly Come Dancing and the West End’s Moulin Rouge!, and provided costumes for Barbie and the forthcoming Wicked movie. Gerald was a lawyer and first came to London to pursue dance. “We sleep in our cars in between lessons. We eat beans on toast for every meal and spend £900 on rhinestones and feather boas.”
Gerald hosts a small guided tour through the manufacturing floor and showroom. We walk through rolls of textured Technicolor fabrics, with headless mannequins wrapped in mint-green tulle and patchworked in jewel-toned silks looming. Clients at DSI come from all over, with dresses made for dancers from Sweden, Slovenia, Lebanon, Costa Rica and most other places you can imagine. Political splits and conflict impact the industry – DSI’s biggest export markets previously were Russia and Ukraine. Around 50 employees work for the company, including 15 machinists. A custom dress order takes four to six weeks – top competitors have between six and 10 dresses made a year, but the margins are slim for manufacturers. It comes down to the details, like rhinestone use. A packet costs £30-40 with around eight packets on one dress all hand-applied. Dresses are expensive and time-consuming to make. Gerald estimates the cost of fabric has gone up over 400 per cent in the last half-decade.
Their biggest competitors are factories in China, which command access to a wider range of fabrics. Demand, though, stays consistent and diverse. “I have a customer who is two years old, and a customer who is 87,” Gerald says.
“It’s tough for guys,” Mark says. “It’s cookie-cutter style. Everyone has the exact same haircuts and suits. Sometimes I’ll wear a grey suit rather than black and that’s as exciting as it gets!” Maddie has four dresses in rotation. She’ll sell them to get four new custom-made looks – black, white, red, hot pink.
Gerald reflects on ballroom’s supposedly static style, considering a dancer’s skirt as the space where trends are most – if at all – reflected. “In the last 10 years, there have been more dressmakers from China, Japan, Russia and Ukraine, so there are less coherent trends. Still, the skirt is where you see the most aesthetic change. It used to be all about pleats. Then in the 80s it was volume. In the 90s, skirts got form-fitting. Volume is fluctuating again.”
When trying to stand out in a throng of 20 dancers, hair and make-up are your sartorial munitions. “We want to make dancers look elegant and classy,” says Ekaterina Semenova, who works for MaryRay, a global styling company founded by Ukrainian former dancer Maria Raevskaya, which specialises in hair and make-up for ballroom competitors.
“It can look like a non-inclusive sport, but there is so much more diversity now. Everyone should feel held in the ballroom” Oskar, 30, dancer and teacher
Eyeliner is sharp, lips are slick and bright. “You’ll never see a nude lip,” says Ekaterina, a Moscow-based ballroom dancer herself. “If you’re 15, from the judge’s podium, you want them drawn to your smokey eyes.” Looks may be maximalist, but they’re rarely experimental. “Let’s just say trends don’t move as fast as other cultures, but oh my gosh, make-up used to be so ugly! Dark black eyeshadow, white liner, shadow to the brow. But you want something that could stick through two days of competition – you might sleep in it!”
Maria and MaryRay’s eight ‘image-makers’ work in just about every continent. Ekaterina came to Maria first as a dancer and, because her current dance partner is significantly taller than her, they created a go-to, taut high bun hairstyle for competitions to make up for the height difference. A typical competition day in Blackpool will start at 2am to get through their clients.
Ekaterina, who has been dancing for 20 years in Russia, Poland and elsewhere in Asia and Europe, is going to Blackpool for the first time, to compete and capture content for MaryRay. She and her partner have been intensively training for five to six days a week. When possible, they go to their main coach, Mirko Gozzoli – an eight-time world champion and ‘ father figure’ – in Rome. She didn’t get to Blackpool’s European Championship last month due to her visa, which she hopes will arrive in time to compete in the amateur ballroom and rising star categories at Winter Gardens.
“I love high-fashion, editorial looks – I like to go crazy,” she says. “The judges aren’t ready for that! In Blackpool they prefer the classical look.” The dancer culture in Russia, she thinks, is much different. “In Russia, dancing is as popular and respected as hockey and rhythmic gymnastics. But when my own country’s circumstances aren’t so nice, dancing is the constant good. Wherever I am in the world, I know I have a home with the dance community. We’re competitors only on the dancefloor.”
Many competitors coming from Russia, China and Ukraine continue to struggle with entry to the UK. “We don’t know if we’ll get our visas in time to compete,” Ekaterina says. “I think we have a different kind of fire in us, then. We prepare with a fighting spirit. Emotional burnout is common, but we perform like it is our last chance on that floor.”
I’m in awe of Ekaterina’s tenacious study of competitive ballroom. The dresses’ flamboyance, she says, is slyly functional. “Many dancers use dresses to cover their mistakes,” she explains. “Maybe their back isn’t so flexible, so they’ll put a lot of stones on the back of their dresses.” But dancers hesitate to experiment for fear of impacting their scores. Silhouettes are repetitive, and you’ll rarely see a woman perform in trousers. Ekaterina favours turtlenecks to create longer, lean lines, especially beside her taller partner.
She will bring three dresses to Blackpool, looks from her brand Ama Tutti. You best believe she’s studied how to optimise her competition outfits. “In the Royal Albert Hall, for example, the white floor with a black dress looks amazing,” Ekaterina explains, “but in Winter Gardens, the room is dark and the chairs and curtains are red. In the first rounds, when the crowd isn’t big, you see a lot of red – to wear similar colours would be a mistake. I’ll wear something lighter than I usually would. But a black dress is my most elegant. It’s perfect for a final.”
Tatyana Vovkokhat’s Grand Dance (GD) Studio in Toronto, Canada ferried 14 young performers to the Blackpool Junior Dance Festival in April. A transatlantic flight to London, a rented minivan to Blackpool, a 4am start into five days of non-stop competition. Established in 1957, the festival now hosts more than 30 countries as represented by upwards of 400 couples and 100 teams. For several GD members, it was their first time in the UK. Downtime was spent in the arcades, eating chips and British sweets, and celebrating dancer Sasha’s 10th birthday.
I speak to Maya, 12, and Mark, 11, both originally from Ukraine, who have been dancing together for a year and a half. It’s their first time in Blackpool, where they reach the U16 semi-final, sweeping across the floor in their bow ties and hot pink tea dresses. “We’re very confident,” says Maya. “We love dancing together.
“I like standard ballroom more and Maya likes Latin more – girls always do,” says Mark.
“Latin gives me the most vibes!” says Maya. “I don’t like the Viennese waltz. It’s too repetitive. The songs are boring!”
“We’re already doing our dream jobs, and I’ve been doing it since I was four,” says Mark.
Filip and Sasha, both 10, have danced together for three years. They competed in standard and Latin. “We did good, but not the best I would say,” says Filip. Soloist Laura, 13, is Filip’s older sister. They come from a family of Polish-born dancers. “Filip and I don’t dance in the same categories any more,” she says, “so we’ll root for each other!”
It’s a tall order to get things right, age, culture shock and jetlag be damned. “Blackpool was very educational,” says Laura. “I had to really fight to dance every day for five days, and I made it into four finals – three standard and one Latin. Dancing Latin is when I feel most free.
“As a solo dancer, you have to be hard on yourself. I want to keep dancing, but I also go to an art school so I’d like to be a painter too.” Some of the GD Studio dancers arrived back in Canada in time to pursue Toronto’s own ballroom championships.
In its current form, the dance is indebted to a maelstrom of cultures, heritages and people taking risks as they bump hips – but its face can be overwhelmingly white and bourgeois. One of Oskar’s main missions in founding BITB was to address the financial demands – from training camps to travel, dressing and association memberships – of competitive ballroom on more marginalised groups. “The wealth gap for Black people in the UK is pronounced,” says Oskar. “I wanted to get Black people of all backgrounds into the ballroom. To give different communities a chance to learn and love this dance like I do.”
BITB runs weekly classes for children aged five or above and adults. Groups are getting bigger, and are eager to compete. “It’s not just about getting Black people in the ballroom – it’s making it an environment that caters to their needs,” he says. They recently held a hair workshop with a specialist and former competitor. “Hair is important for the ballroom look, so you have to know how to work your hair texture. We’re bridging that knowledge gap.”
“It can look like a non-inclusive sport, but there is so much more diversity now,” says Oskar. He also points to the growing number of dancers who are wheelchair users. “Everyone should feel held in the ballroom.”
Ballroom dancing brings together the rigour of competitive athletics with the grandezza of theatre, with a touch of British pomp and – I think, as I manoeuvre myself into a pink, cake tier-esque dress in DSI’s back office room – glamour and camp folded into the mix. It’s a culture buoyed by another very British allegiance, to tradition and mythmaking. But it has lasted thanks to international and homegrown dancers with sheer grit and starry eyes. Is ballroom ready for a dance, dance revolution? Dancesport can feel both like a stagnant pond stifled by its own histories, and an ecosystem straining at the balustrade. But when that first rhumba trumpet blows over the Winter Gardens, and the dancers’ hearts skip a beat, every cucaracha and double-step is hit like it’s the last dance of their lives.
Hair YUMI NAKADA-DINGLE using SAM MCKNIGHT, make-up ALICE DODDS using SHISEIDO, dancers FRAN CARTER, MORRISON KONG, styling assistant SIAN DAVIS
