Inside Dancesport’s cutthroat world of ballroom dancing
Melbourne’s prestigious Dancesport competition is more than just sequins and ball gowns. The competition is tough, standards are stringent — and there must always be a loser.
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Candy Lane can turn dancers into champions but even she knows her skills have some limit.
“You can’t teach the X factor,” Lane says.
“Our job as teachers is to find it and bring it out if it’s there. Some dancers are natural and others aren’t but it’s not all about being a natural dancer.
“It’s the determination of the person that will see them through because, at a high level, all the couples are fabulous so it comes down to the X factor.”
Lane, born in Auckland, became the youngest winner of the professional Australasian and South Pacific Championships when she was only 18, going onto win four more times.
She won the Professional Latin title at the Australian Dancesport Championship for three years in a row in 1977 and was ranked third in the world.
Then she turned to teaching, co-hosting five seasons of Dancing With the Stars in New Zealand and has now been one of 111 judges on the Dancesport panel for the past two years.
It’s a responsibility that she takes seriously and carefully.
“It’s not about toughness – it’s a responsibility,” she says.
“There will always be a winner and a loser. That is just the way it is and, like any sport, it can change from one competition to the next.
“The Australians are known for their ‘never give up’ attitude and that’s what I really love about working with them.”
Lane has seen many changes in the industry since she began dancing.
Dancers now are much more likely to follow their competition around the world on an iPhone, rather than buying airfares to stay updated with the latest dance trends and moves.
And the major competitions were all overseas.
The British Championship in Blackpool still may be the most famous but Lane says that since the Australian competition opened to the world a few years ago, it entered the big league.
“They all want to have the chance to put themselves up against couples who are better than they are to learn and improve – that is the nature of competition,” she says.
There have also been major developments in what the dancers are physically able to do now with the standard improving along with the dancers’ willingness to push their bodies ever further.
“Especially, I find Latin (dancing) now which is very athletic,” she says.
“The speed needed in their turns is incredible and they’re also very balletic.
“They have an ability to be so agile that you’d think they were athletes.
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“Even in the ballroom style, it’s still classical and beautiful, but there’s a lot more shaping going on which is very exciting to watch. It’s definitely not an old art form.
“Some of the boys do amazing spins in just a few beats and the girls are doing beautiful movements.
“The hardest thing about being a judge is that, once you’ve been a top competitor, you really care and want to get it right because you know how important it is for the people competing.
“Even though it’s just my opinion, you need to make sure you get it right.”
— 2019 Interflora Australian Dancesport Championship, Margaret Court Arena, December 6-8. Bookings: ticketek.com.au or 13 28 49