Blackpool Dance Festival.

The biggest and most prestigious event of a ballroom dancer's calendar, the British Open Championships, better known as the Blackpool Dance Festival, is a captivating experience for any kind of dancer. The sixty-ninth festival, held in this English seaside resort, proved this. It is the ballroom dance world's equivalent of the Superbowl, Wimbledon, the Oscars. If you win, your career is made, but with 2,500 participants, there are not many winners.

Sequined hopefuls come from as far away as Siberian mining towns to dance--if only for one round--alongside some of the best exponents of modern and Latin movement. Spectators are prepared to stand into the small hours to see the final round of each class, where six couples battle it out for that coveted first place. And during the last rounds of the professional modern and Latin classes, even standing room is in short supply.

British professionals Sammy Stopford and Barbara McColl came in first in the Latin with their sultry rumba, as well as in their cha cha cha, samba, and paso doble, but couldn't beat the dynamic Corky and Shirley Ballas in the jive. This couple is always breathtakingly spirited in the dance, and came in second overall.

Finnish dancers Jukka Haapalainen and Sirpa Suutari's charismatic presentation was rewarded with a well-earned third place in every dance, allowing them to beat last year's winners Johan and Nadia Eftedal of Norway, who came in fourth on the day they announced their retirement.

Bianka Schreiber and Hans-Reinhard Galke made Germany proud by coming in fifth, and Australia had unexpected glory when Jason Gilkison and Peta Roby replaced the usual finalists and snapped up sixth place. This couple has given up modern to concentrate on Latin. Specializing is the name of the game when it comes to winning trophies.

The modern section lost two more great talents, too: its 1993 Blackpool champions, John Wood and Anne Lewis, announced their retirement, a disappointment to the many ballroom enthusiasts who prefer this couple's powerful style to their close British rivals, Marcus and Karen Hilton, the world champions.

With Wood and Lewis off the floor, nobody imagined there'd be much competition for the light-footed and effervescent Hiltons; nevertheless, the final was electrifying, with all participants stretching themselves to the max. The Hiltons did come in first (in every dance) as expected, but they are surely aware that Luca Baricchi and Loraine Barry--a new British partnership that came in second--were too appealing for comfort. This young duo dances the tango with such haughtiness and passion that you just can't take your eyes off them.

Italians Augusto Schiavo and Caterina Arzenton (third) and Norwegians Kim and Cecilie Rygel (fourth) put on quite a performance, as did the Japanese talents Hide and Yoko Tanaka (fifth) and Hiro and Kyoko Amano (sixth). It's hard to believe that the Japanese couples started dancing so late in life (Japan has no ballroom dance programs for children), but still manage to look as if they've been dancing their whole lives.

In the amateur modern class, Joanna Bolton and Timothy Howson of England took the title for the second time, beating almost five hundred others. Paul Green and Karren Rufus of Australia won the Latin title in the same class.

But there were so many classes and finalists--even formation teams and exhibition dancing--that they are too numerous to mention here by name. By the end of the competition, the judges had given out more than 100,000 points. Each point represented three or four minutes of mesmerizing movement, making the total entertainment value of this festival almost impossible to assess.