Ohio Star Ball Saturday and America's Ballroom Challenge!

FAF's new dress... Photo courtesy of FADS Chicago North

Well today was a great day! I can tell you I am just about too tired to see straight, but it was all worth it. We got a bit of a late start, dining on breakfast at early lunch time... so we'll just call that brunch. :-) Then wandered around with Bonnie, Michael, and Endearing. We watched some Amature Standard, which is actually now called International Ballroom. It was so cool. After studying our program (aka phone book size $30 program) we realized the evening session where TSD and FAF were competing in World Open Smooth straight off started at 7... not the 8pm we had planned on. Minor oversight on my part as the "Cruise Director" for this little voyage. So I rearranged our dinner plans with the crew (who have referred to themselves as my "entorage" in the past) and we headed off to the Elevator Brewery as refered to ETP by Megan and Vincente, they were totally right... our kind of place!

Elevator Brewing Co. Photo: M. Sprague

As we were wrapping up what felt very much like a family dinner we realized we'd have to hustle to get back and changed into our formal wear for the evening. We called our hotel to arrange a ride back (it was a short jaunt, but we didn't have jackets). Somehow the hotel didn't come through after 15-20 min so ETP his wife Spicy (She fits the moniker quite well!) Endearing and I hiked the short distance back as quick as we could. Bonnie and Michael made it shortly after by calling a cab.

We did unfortunately miss Round 1 of the World Open Smooth... the World Latin was underway.. but we did get to see TSD and FAF dance in the quarter finals! They looked AMAZING I can not wait til we see them in Rising Star tomorrow! Not only that but FAF's new dress.... OMG... awesome!

Being that I was unable to prepare as I had planned for the evening, (who knew this girl could go from jeans to black tie in 20 min flat?) I was getting very tired very early... usually when I travel and I'm out and about I like to take another shower before I head out for the evening...it's like my recharge time...without a recharge time, I flunk out at about 10pm... BUT.. this was the night of America's Ballroom Challenge! NO WAY I could miss that!

TSD and FAF Photo Courtesy of FADS Chicago North

After Endearing and I realized our favorite pros of the night hadn't made it to the semi's we left the ballroom to find some caffeine and recharge. 1 red bull, 1 cherry coke, and one bathroom break later we were back in the ballroom for the rest of the night (the evening, by the way, began at 7pm and went non stop until 1am).

Endearing and I were the only two to make it through the whole night, but we came to see ballroom and ballroom we did see! America's Ballroom Challenge is when the top pro couples in each style (International Ballroom, Latin, American Smooth, American Rhythm) then compete in two show dances, a long program and a short... kind of like figure skating. The top rated couple of those two show dances win America's Ballroom Challenge. It's pretty cool, and totally what the PBS show I mentioned earlier was about. This year the winner was decided by a remarkable Rule 11 (I'll tell you what that is another time) basically it's a tie breaking rule, between the International Ballroom pair of Katusha Demidova/Arunas Bizokas and the American Rhythm pair Bree Watson/Decho Kraev. It was very very cool... If I can find video of their show dances I will post the link.

One more day! One more day in this beautiful ballroom world... Tomorrow brings us to the Rising Star portion of the competition which is a category that allows newer professionals compete against each other without having to worry about the "uber" pros in World Open (once you win Rising Star, you can't compete in it again at that comp, or competition type).

Everyone have your fingers crossed for TSD and FAF! :-)