The most demanding form of partner dancing, showcases are choreographed and performed by a single pair of dancers.
Each of the three completed routines – Jealousy, Smooth and Kashmir – won national-level championships.
See comments on each routine below.
More:
- Teams routines with hand-picked dancers
- Group routines open to any student who wanted to learn.
- Freestyle – improvised dancing at the social and competitive levels
‘Jealousy’
Choreographed and performed with Enza Burgio.
This routine marks the apotheosis of what I felt was possible with partner dancing.
To the tune of ‘Roxanne’ from the film Moulin Rouge.
The version here is the last time we performed the routine. Enza was very emotional at the end of the routine as I think she sensed it would be the last time we danced it together. She clings to me in the final position.
It was probably our best performance. It is somewhat tarnished by the lighting guy taking it on himself to put on distracting lighting but the camera-work is good.
A married couple once came up to me and said: ‘Whenever we want to show what’s possible with Ceroc, we show them Jealousy.’ The wife added: ‘Well, tell him..’; After a pause, she added: ‘Every time he watches it, he gets tears in his eyes.’
‘Smooth’
This was the start of my association with Enza.
I used to refer to this as ‘our accidental routine’.One time at a dance class, Enza asked if I would dance with her at a friend’s wedding. I said okay, thinking she just wanted to do some freestyling. But then she turned up at my place wanting to put together a routine to Debelah Morgan’s ‘Dance with me’. She said she wanted to do lifts. I said, ‘That’s not lifts music’.
To warm up, I put on Santana’s ‘Smooth’. Enza sparked up. ‘I love this song.’
I said ‘Well we can do lifts to that’.
So we started throwing moves together… We did it at the wedding… polished it up and won three dance championships with it.
This version is from the Australasian Ceroc Dance Championships in New Zealand which we won.
‘Sacred and Profane’ aka ‘Kashmir’.
With Vicki Thompson.
The first routine that I was ever put together. To the tune of ‘Kashmir’ from No Quarter by Robert Plant and Jimmy Page. A blend of pumping Led Zeppelin rock and Arabic music. Not something that had ever been experienced in the world of Ceroc before.
Vicki was particularly nervous going into this.
We thought might finish and people would sit there in stunned silence going ‘What the hell was that?’
Bizarrely, we won the championship… despite my slipping over. This was an object lesson in choosing the right footwear for a dance floor. We tested the floor at the beginning of the day and we thought ‘This is perfect for us’. But, by the end of a full day of competition and thousands of spins, the floor had turned into glass and people were falling over.
People whose dancing and choreography I really respected came up afterwards and told me how bowled over they were by the routine.
Unfortunately we never captured a decent version of the routine on video so the version here is presented with all its flaws.
Great Balls of Fire…. the routine that never was…
This is a practice session with Enza for a rock’n’roll style routine we were throwing together.
There was a rock’n’roll competition with a substantive cash prize. We had gotten through the heats and were putting this routine together for the semis.
Unfortunately Enza’s car broke down on the way to the semi-final. This also happened to be the last week of the semis so we never got to perform it or have a chance to go onto the finals. This was a clear sign that life was tapping us on the shoulders, calling us in other directions.
To my surprise, I had this video of a practice session. After the runthrough, I say, ‘Considering we don’t actually know this routine, it was pretty damn good in places.’ Sums it up.
And yes, I am whistling in one place during it.
The Hop… the start of another routine which never was…
The start of another routine we were were throwing together for the same competition. (We had to do two songs.) It looks like it would have come together well…
