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Ballroom blitz

More than 7,000 dancers will take part in the Millennium DanceSport Championship, which has become one of the top U.S. dance competitions.

By MARTY CLEAR
Published June 23, 2005

	[Millennium DanceSport Championship
	Victor Da Silva, the world cabaret champion, and Hanna Kartunnen, the British Latin champion, will be doing a cabaret performance at this weekend’s event.

It didn't seem to be mere chance, Martha Williams said, that brought her to ballroom dance, and ultimately to the Millennium DanceSport Championship. It seemed that there was some mechanism at work. Whether you call it fate or destiny, something or someone wanted her to dance.

It was six years ago and Williams, a former professional ice skater who lives in Clearwater Beach, was tiring of her relatively sedentary lifestyle as an interior designer. Local ice rinks didn't have anything that piqued her interest.

She was in the drive-through lane at her bank when her car overheated. She didn't have a cell phone, so she went to a pay phone and called for a tow truck.

"I turned around and there was a dance studio," Williams said. "They told me that I could come in and wait because it was cooler inside. So I went in to wait and I said, "This looks like so much fun.' It was so joyful. And you know, I totally forgot about the tow truck."

Williams' life was changed forever. She threw herself into dancing, and about a year or so later discovered the Millennium DanceSport Championship, a major international ballroom dance competition held annually in the Tampa Bay area. This year's event, which also incorporates demonstrations from some of the world's best dancers, is scheduled for tonight, Friday and Saturday at the Palm Court Ballroom at the Renaissance Vinoy Resort in St. Petersburg.

"I started Millennium DanceSport Championship in 1998 and it's grown to be one of the premiere dance competitions in the United States," said Michael Chapman, a former champion dancer. "It gets bigger every year. This year is the largest number of entrants ever, over 7,000 dancers. We start at 9 in the morning and go at least until midnight every night.

"Ballroom dancing is getting a lot of publicity," Chapman said. "There was the movie Shall We Dance? with Richard Gere, and then (the hit ABC summer reality series) Dancing With the Stars on TV."

"There's a whole new energy to ballroom dancing," Chapman said.

The number of entrants in the Millennium DanceSport is especially significant, he said, because five other major dance competitions are being held in the United States this weekend. Millennium seems to be outdrawing them all.

But even more significant is the caliber of some of the dancers who will be competing and performing. Victor Da Silva, the world cabaret champion, and Hanna Kartunnen, the British Latin champion, perform Friday night, and the world ballroom champions, Jonathan Wilkens and Katusha Demidova, perform Saturday.

Dancers compete in three categories (amateur, professional and pro-am, in which students dance with their teachers) for cash, prizes and titles. Millennium DanceSport has become prestigious enough that the winner of the cabaret-style competition will officially be the U.S. champion.

For Williams, who will compete for the sixth time in the pro-am division, dancing and figure skating have essential similarities but also significant differences.

"It's much more about theater than skating was," she said. "It's about how you make the audience feel, not about what you're doing. You look at a skater's face and they're very determined and focused on what they're going to do, that next triple. But in dance, you have to emanate the mood of the dance."

Millennium DanceSport Championship, today through Saturday at the Renaissance Vinoy Resort Palm Court Ballroom in St. Petersburg. Tickets for amateur and pro-am competitions, from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., are $15. Evening shows begin at 8 today and Friday and 7 Saturday. Evening tickets cost $40 tonight, $50 Friday and $55 Saturday. Go to m2dance.com for information. Call (727) 954-8154 for tickets.

[Last modified June 22, 2005, 10:45:07]