World Cup Wheelchair Dance
For the 18th time a big wheelchair event was organized in Boxmeer, a small Dutch town near Nijmegen.
Dance teacher Hans Verhoeven and his staff organizes every year a big event over the Easter weekend with street dance, standard and latin dance and wheelchair dance. Corrie van Hugten and Ondine de Hullu were responsible for everything around the wheelchair dance competition.
On Friday the 14th 17 participants form 6 countries attended a classifier training, given by Ondine de Hullu, classifier trainer.
In the whole event representatives of 19 countries, including Australia, Taiwan and Mexico, were present. The chairperson of the Dutch NPC came to visit and stayed a whole day.
On Saturday and Sunday 334 dance couples competed in different classes and categories. There are different forms in wheelchair dance: duo-dance (two wheelchair dancers as a couple) and combi dance (a sitting and a standing partner). In both forms (in handicap classes Lwd 1 and Lwd2) there are classes for beginners, advanced and elite sport dancers.
In the World Cup Standard, World Cup Latin and World Cup Duo (all in Lwd 1 and Lwd 2) a big number of couples competed at an extremely high level. Especially the Latin classes gave a spectacular view of movement, speed, colors and almost incredible movements made by the wheelchair dancers. The Standard classes provide us with style, elegance, partnership, connection and control. The duo classes hade a mix of both.
In the other categories beginners and more advanced dancers of all ages and all disabilities showed there abilities and pleasure in dancing with big enthusiasm! Think that you live in Australia, have your very first competition in a country on the other side of the world and win a medal...!!!
Almost all foreign teams and a lot of Dutch dancers stayed in one hotel and in the evenings they had a real nice time together with all old and new friendships, talking, music and dance!
It was for dancers, team leaders and all others involved an unforgettable event.