On December 14-17, 2011, Ahtoy and I had the honor of judging Albert Torres’ World Latin Dance Cup in Las Vegas, alongside dance legend and head judge Billy Fajardo, multi-World Champion across disciplines and a former ABT dancer with Mikhail Baryshnikov, Tito Ortos from Puerto Rico, choreographer for Gilberto Santa Rosa and Victor Manuelle, as well as a panel of other renowned judges from around the world.

WLDC 2011 Judges

After judging multiple national championships earlier in the year, one of our favorites having been the Colombia championship, it felt like a family reunion, with dancers from over 40 countries competing in 20 divisions.

We got into Vegas Tuesday evening and made the best of the night by immediately hitting the pavement for a dinner at Wynn’s Stratta, followed by a spectacular show at the Wynn, Le Reve. Effectively the show is entirely in and under water, but includes dancing, acrobatics, choreography and much more. The dancers and acrobats are in incredible shape and profoundly charismatic, setting the stage for what was about to come in the next four days of judging the World Latin Dance Cup at the legendary Tropicana.

On Wednesday, we started out with a final qualifier and the level of talent was outstanding.

http://www.ustream.tv/embed/2170655

Thursday and Friday featured the semi-finals, where we had to choose five finalists for each division out of over twenty competitors and teams for most of the division – i.e. for 75% of the talent that had traveled thousands of miles to compete in Vegas the dream to compete in the finals ended after a few minutes on stage.

The most competitive divisions, such as on1, on2, cabaret, juniors and teams were especially intense for everyone involved – the audience (in Vegas and around the world), the competitors, and the judges. In many cases only a tenth of a point separated the fifth from the sixth place and emotions ran high on both nights.

Luckily, during the day I had time to hit the gym and work up a sweat before sitting on my chair for 4-5 hours each night to judge. Also, given that some of the best US and international chefs have restaurants in Vegas (Gagnaire, Babbo, Lagasse, Keller, etc), we had time to sample some of the best food in the country each day for lunch. La vita e bella.

Tuesday night we started off with Stratta at the Wynn. Wednesday we opted for Delmonico at the Venetian, since Bouchon was closed for renovations until the weekend, Thursday we checked out Olives at the Bellaggio, Friday the Canyon Ranch Café with its organic and healthy cuisine, and on Saturday we had a delicious brunch and oysters at Bouchon. That experience prompted a replay on Sunday before heading back to New York.

But I digress.

The hardest part of being a judge was to not talk to any of my dancer friends throughout the weekend to remain neutral and fair. Still, once Friday’s final scores were released we had to lock ourselves up to at least delay the avalanche of questions from dancers that a) did not make it, b) made it but wanted tips on how to score higher and c) those that thought they should have made it but didn’t.

Saturday.

Due to the numerous divisions we started the competition an hour earlier on Saturday. Host Albert Torres announced that a few hundred thousand viewers had set a new record for the event in terms of global coverage and buzz, and at 5pm we were off to a highly emotional night filled with drama, tension, powerful dancing and fierce competition.

A few former world champions had barely made it into the finals, while some newcomers had come out of nowhere (both geographically speaking and in terms of their abilities), thus emotions ran high from the first minute.

Adding fuel to the fire was the fact that a few top competitors were too excited during their piece and ended up violating the rules. For most non-cabaret divisions, a key rule is that either no more than three tricks/lifts are permitted or that the showcase has to be non-acrobatic, meaning that at no time is it allowed for both feet to leave the floor.

Early on in one of the divisions a top competitor couple put too much energy into one such move and her feet left the ground for a split second. As a result, the couple did not make it into the top three.

Many of the shows already early on had the audience on their feet. By the time the most competitive divisions came around, the air in the ballroom was so thick with excitement and nervous energy that one could cut it with a knife. Bachata, on1, on2, cabaret couples, the junior division, cha cha cha and the team and same sex divisions ended up becoming nailbiters.

As we entered the results backstage and calculated the scores it became clear that for all those categories the differential between winning and not making it into the top three was less than 1%. The difference between first and second place for some divisions was less than 0.1%, and in some cases less than 0.02%. The competitors intuitively knew that and each minute of us being backstage calculating must have felt like years to them.

Finally around midnight we made it back into the ballroom to announce the final scores to the audience and the world to see.

Here are the final scores and videos for the winning routines.

For me and all of us, it was a great privilege and honor to judge the World Latin Dance Cup and to help usher in a new generation of world class performers that will represent the beautiful art form of Latin dance and Salsa around the world in 2012 and beyond. This year clearly belonged to Mexico, which in recent years has established itself as a powerhouse generator of astounding talent.

Personally for me it was a pleasure to see Paulina Posadas Dagio win the high stakes on2 division with her partner David Zepeda. All nine judges gave them top scores far ahead of the other finalists, making it the only unanimous decision of the night. Both of them are incredible performers, beautiful dancers, and humble people that will inspire audiences around the world. We had the pleasure of having Paulina with us and our company in New York in the studio and on the Bailando Por Una Causa stage this summer and I can think of no better role model for dancers today as Paulina.