I went to visit my aunt, who was still living in the same flat in Vladivostok where I had lived with her when I was younger, and still with Grandad Boris, too. But she was a single mother now after her husband died of a stroke and she was bringing up her two young children completely alone. Even with government support as a single parent, she was barely getting enough money to feed her family and she couldn’t really work as she was always looking after them. My mum would help by going to babysit so she might be able to do some part-time work but it was hard. There was no way I couldn’t help her, they were my family as well, and I got cross with myself for living in another country for so little time and already forgetting how much of a struggle life is for my own family in my own country. So I started sending money to my aunt, too, who of course was more like a sister to me.
I couldn’t cope with seeing them struggle and I feel blessed that the work I do, not only do I love, but it also allows me to earn good money and help my family. And I will continue to support them for as long as they need me; that is what family is all about. Anyway, there is no one else to help them! My aunt never remarried and she dedicated her life to her two children, sacrificing her own happiness. I suppose she didn’t want to date anyone when her primary concern was always for her children. My grandad is still working; soon he will be eighty years old and he can’t stop working as he feels he needs to keep earning money to help my aunt. We all feel a sense of duty to help our family and so we do: it’s as simple as that.
So while that first year in Seattle was hard in some respects it was also a time when I felt very loved, very looked after and very privileged. I also met my best friend out there, Alex. She is still living in Seattle and I always try and visit her at least once a year. I am godmother to her son Maxim, too. I met her when she came to me for dance lessons, around nine months after I had moved to the States, and we have been friends ever since.
But making friends and being a family wasn’t my mission when I left Russia, it was to dance and to compete and to do well. So Brian and I took part in a few competitions just to get started and we flew to Arizona to do a small one alongside Bob and Julia. I found a woman in Seattle who owned a big dance club and made dance costumes so I was able to have a couple of dresses made for the competitions, which was very exciting. Every year in September there is a big competition called the Nationals. It is held in Miami and Brian and I decided it was time for us to go and watch and show everyone that there was a new couple on the scene: we were the new dancers in town!
But the Nationals weren’t held that year as on 11 September 2001 terrorists attacked New York City and they cancelled the competition as there were no planes flying anywhere in the country. For me 9/11 was a very strange situation for one reason alone: I could completely understand why a country felt so aggrieved over a terrorist attack on its own soil, but I couldn’t fathom how they could watch other countries on the news being bombed or attacked and not seem to care. There were so many things happening in Russia – schools were being bombed in Moscow and there was a lot fighting in Chechnya. So when it happened in New York, I remember telling people that I understood how they felt because fighting and terrorist attacks were not a new thing in my country, but they didn’t have a clue about the rest of the world. They just knew what was happening when it was happening to them and their own country. I found that really weird – I knew all the stuff that was happening in Moscow was on the news and on CNN so I guess I was just a little shocked that they didn’t seem to know anything about it.
Of course, it was a very upsetting time for everyone in America. For a while the whole country was at a standstill and everyone was in mourning. You couldn’t fly anywhere, security was completely tight, but people were so scared they didn’t want to fly either. I did understand the tragedy of it all and when we travelled to New York six months later for a competition we went to see Ground Zero and it was a truly shocking sight. It had affected everyone in the States. It was in the news non-stop, constantly on TV, and for a while the whole country just stopped. By the beginning of October, flying internally in America was permitted, although of course the security was super-tight. Brian and I took part in a few small competitions and then in November we travelled to Ohio to take part in the second-biggest competition in the US after the Nationals, the Ohio Star Ball in Columbus.
This was where we made our ‘big competition’ debut and we danced the American smooth. Brian’s parents Ron and Kathy flew in to watch and we competed in the Rising Star competition, which is when you make the transition from Amateur to Professional. And we did really well! We ended up fourth overall after about five heats, which was amazing for us, and so we were really, really happy.
Not only did we do well but we had been noticed, too. The judges and other dancers had started to talk about us – we had come onto the radar, as it were. It also helped that we were often out and about with Bob and Julia, spending time with them over that competition weekend. We felt privileged that we were their friends and people started realising we were like their protégés so it was good for us in other ways, too. It was also good to watch other couples competing and seeing different styles and meeting new people. I got quite friendly with lots of Russians who had come over from a dance school in New York. It was altogether a positive experience and good that we had come onto the scene and made people talk. And I think it helped that we were a good-looking couple, too – Brian was a very handsome boy and because I was a bleached blonde Russian girl, just like Julia, they all thought I was her sister to begin with. But I didn’t mind that if it helped us get noticed!
We also had a good result in the Professional category that we entered and made it through to the semi-finals. To be part of the Top 12 couples was really encouraging.
To be fourth in the Rising Star category and make the semi-finals in the Professional category made people wonder where we had come from and I remember the audience stomping their feet and cheering for us after we had danced. It was a fantastic feeling but I also felt so overwhelmed: it was like this was my dream but it wasn’t a dream any more!
I knew I had worked hard to get there; this was what I had always wanted to do and being watched and cheered on in an arena filled with about 5,000 people was just incredible. Not to mention how kind and sweet people were, too, coming up to us and congratulating us afterwards. It was exactly what we needed to happen – to believe that we had done the right thing as a couple, to think my move to America was worth it. Sadly, while all the admiration and acceptance were amazing, we quickly realised that if we wanted to actually start winning these sorts of competitions or certainly move up in the rankings, we would not only have to dance the dances, we’d have to play the game, too…
CHAPTER 12
Dancing to the right tune
As far as dance teachers were concerned, we had only worked with Bob and Julia and, while we trusted them and felt they were helping us enormously with our routines and choreography, they were of course still competing themselves. So people started asking us why we still wanted to be taught by a couple we might eventually end up competing against.
But we never saw it like that: we never thought we would stand a chance against them as they were the champions and all we wanted to do was learn from them. Then we found that some of the judges who were marking us in competitions were saying that we needed to think carefully about our mentors and they started dropping hints that it wouldn’t be a good idea if we continued to use Bob and Julia. It was all getting quite political and it was at that point we realised that to be successful in this world, we would need to play the game, too.
Now at first this was difficult for me to understand. I had come from Russia with the understanding that if you work hard and put the effort in, you let the dancing speak for itself. But if we wanted to get anywhere in this business, it didn’t seem that was how you progressed. I needed to speak to someone about what was expected of us so I asked Julia, who revealed some home truths about the ballro
om dancing world.
‘Unfortunately, Kristina, it isn’t always the work you put in that will get you anywhere, it’s about the judges and the couples they teach, that is how they make a living. They don’t get much money from judging so they teach couples and then put those couples through the different rounds in competitions. It looks good on them and more couples then want to be taught by them,’ she explained.
So the judges who adjudicate in the big competitions have dancers who they teach, who then make it to the final. But it didn’t always work that way: Bob and Julia had been champions for many years and were loved throughout the dancing industry. There was no mistaking their ability either, so while on some level what Julia had told me made sense, you also had to have the talent to be champions like them.
There was another couple always running second to Bob and Julia, who some of the judges were really pushing to be champions, but when it came down to the marks, they just weren’t as good. Yes, you can push them all you want but when it comes to crowning the champions, you have to give it to the ones who deserve it. Bob and Julia never let their standard of dance drop.
Brian and I were very proud people and we didn’t want to get involved in all the politics and unspoken rules, so we decided that we would just let our dancing speak. If anything it made us more determined, so we continued as we were and we started entering more competitions. It did work for a while as I think people realised how much we loved dancing and how enthusiastic we were. New on the circuit, we were showing people how much we enjoyed what we were doing.
We did decide, however, to follow some advice that another couple had given us, which was to head to New York and seek out the teaching talents of Paul Killick. One of the most famous ballroom dancers in the world, he had been British champion for many years. ‘If you want to up your game, head to New York and have a few lessons with Paul,’ we were advised.
As a little girl back in Russia I grew up watching Paul Killick on videotape, right from the beginning when he was just an amateur to when he became a professional champion, so to even consider having a lesson with this man was unreal! Of course, Brian was adamant that if it was going to help us as a couple, money was no object and I was so, so excited! So we flew to New York where Paul was teaching at his friend’s school and started our lessons with him. We loved every second. Paul was very good with technique, very strict but very positive, too. He said that Brian was special and just needed time to develop his technique and grow as a dancer and my strong Russian-taught techniques complemented him well.
Both of us really loved his lessons and soon became hooked. We also found that it really synced us as a couple, too. Obsessed with Paul and his partner Hannah, we started saving money to fly him to Seattle ourselves or we would save money to travel to England when he went back to the UK to compete. Paul was actually living in Kent and although we spent a fortune on seeing him, we were obsessed and basically made him our primary coach. We thought he was doing wonders for us as a couple and was therefore worth every penny.
But it soon became clear that we had upset quite a few people by this association and were getting their backs up. Word got around that we were taking lessons on dancing American Rhythm from someone from England. The American teachers and judges didn’t like it and they made it quite clear that they felt snubbed. According to them, it was as if we were saying that they weren’t good enough to teach us, that we had to go to England to be taught. It completely rubbed them up the wrong way. Of course, that wasn’t the case at all, we had just found someone who worked for the both of us and who had eliminated the arguments we used to have about what needed to be done and how it must be done to make our performances better.
What was the problem with that?
We felt Paul was helping our performances so much that a year later, when we returned to the Emerald Ball championships in Los Angeles in May 2003, we won first place in the Rising Star category, which, for a couple who had been dancing together for just over a year, was quite unheard of. That cemented our relationship with Paul and we decided that he could help us go all the way to become National Champions. We didn’t want to take lessons from anyone else and we started making it into the finals of the bigger competitions, too, coming fifth or fourth place and seeing that winning post within our grasp.
As a couple we wanted to succeed so badly – not only because Brian and his family had put a lot of faith in me in bringing me over to their country but also because we had worked really, really hard over the past two years. We lived and breathed dancing and there was nothing else in our lives more important – we were so driven, so young and in love. Yes, we were in love and had started dating at that point, too. When you are spending so much time with someone, living and breathing dancing, it is a very natural development to start dating your dance partner. It happens a great deal in this industry and when you are young and sharing the same goal in life, the same hobby and the same love for something, you think that is all it takes to have a good relationship. You are in a complete bubble: you don’t go out to meet other people as you are always dancing and if you do go out and meet someone else, then you find you don’t have any time to spend with that person as you are always rehearsing or competing. And then to top it all off, you are spending time travelling round the country and dancing with your partner – another man! So who would want to date you?
So yes, dancers do end up dating each other, but you will also find that they usually end up splitting once their professional careers are over. They realise that the thing that was gluing them together was the only thing they really had in common. But for Brian and I at that time, we were determined. Although the hours were brutal, in our minds there was no other way, as there was nothing more important to us than to succeed on the dance floor. And all our money was going into dancing. We might skip a lunch but we would use that money to pay for a lesson in the evening or to hire a studio to rehearse. We were lucky that we lived with his parents and could therefore put every single penny we earned through teaching into our dancing. Paying for Paul was expensive but he was a legend and so worth every penny.
But then the dancing mafia, as I like to call them, reared their ugly heads. A year after becoming Rising Star Champions and making regular appearances in the finals of most of the competitions we entered, suddenly we found ourselves dropping marks and not getting past the semi-finals stages. And then suddenly we were struggling to get through all the heats of the competitions, too. We couldn’t understand what was happening – our standard hadn’t dropped and we were certainly as committed as ever. And then it dawned on us: the judges weren’t going to forgive us for not using them as our teachers. It was like some sort of grooming, I suppose. We would pick up on hints from some of the judges after our performances, like, ‘Oh, you should come to one of my lessons… I could do this for you, I can make that happen for you, etc., etc.’
I remember being stopped by one of the judges after a big competition in which we had done particularly badly. He told us in no uncertain terms what the problem was. We were walking down the hotel corridor (a lot of the competitions were held in hotels with large ballrooms or function rooms for performances) and he stopped us both cold.
‘So, guys, that wasn’t a great result, was it? I think you need to start respecting the society you are in and we are all there to help you. Do you still want to take lessons overseas and still compete in our competitions? You are snubbing all of us! You think we’re not good enough as teachers and you are travelling all the way to England to be trained. And you think we are actually going to let you win or get the title? Who do you think you are?’
So there it was, clear as day. Unless we started playing the game we weren’t going to get anywhere. I suspect it happens in other sports but I know our world is especially cruel. When you have five or six judges watching your every move (with up to eleven in the bigger competitions) it does to a certain extent come down to their own personal opinion. There are so many aspects of you
r performance – technique, speed, chemistry, the artistic side – to judge that it sometimes feels as though it just comes down to personal preference. There is no Olympic measure in the world of dancing. If you run a race and you are the fastest and cross the finishing line first there is no denying you are the winner. Or if you jump the furthest or throw the furthest there is always a clear champion.
It was very apparent from that conversation that the judges were teaching us a lesson and that they were cross with us because for two years we never took a lesson with anyone from America. I suppose we had been a little naïve, too. We were young and hungry to succeed the right way, to let our dancing speak for itself. That was always what I was taught and Brian was also like that, and so when we started losing to couples who weren’t as good as us but were connected, it was hard. It seemed like the judges didn’t care about us at all, they were too busy marking up the couples who were taking lessons with them, bringing them business and earning them money. We felt like an outcast couple who no one cared for, and not a single judge would stand up for us. Bob and Julia didn’t have any influence over the judges for us either. If anything, our association with them worked against us as I think they saw similarities in our routines and to be champions you couldn’t copy anyone, you had to be unique, so I did understand that idea.
So we went back home and spoke to Brian’s parents, who were very supportive. They didn’t really understand what was going on but they did say to us that it was our money and we had invested so much time and effort in our dancing already, why not take a couple of lessons with one or two of the judges and see what happened? We were devastated. I started to cry and was very upset with this harsh reality and it did put us in a horrible position. We began to argue and blame one another and, both being so young, it took us a while to accept that we would have to give in and play the game that was expected of us. But we hated the idea: not only did it feel like we were conforming to this underhand way of being successful, but we had to pay someone who we didn’t think would actually help our dancing a great deal but who would have influence when it came to scoring and mark us favourably.
Dancing Out of Darkness Page 9