April 8, 2006
More than 3,000 spectators attend the Ten Dance European Cup at the sports center in Ashdod. Under the auspices of the International Dance Sport Federation (renamed the World Dance Sport Federation in 2011), it is the first international dance sports competition held in Israel. Ten Dance is a ballroom competition in which couples compete in five standard ballroom dances (waltz, foxtrot, quickstep, tango and Viennese waltz) and five international Latin dances (rumba, samba, paso doble, cha-cha-cha and jive). The competition includes 50 dancers from 25 European countries.
While various forms of dance have long been popular in Israel, the growth of competitive ballroom dancing in the country owes its popularity to two occurrences. The first is the massive immigration from the former Soviet Union. After the collapse of the Warsaw Pact in 1989 and the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991, nearly 1 million Russian Jews make aliyah to Israel in the 1990s. The influx of so many Russians, for whom ballroom dancing is an integral part of their culture, has a tremendous impact on the growth of competitive dancing in Israel. Galina Shustin, the director of the Ballroom Dancing Academy in Ashdod, tells Al-Monitor in 2015: “When I arrived in Israel from Russia in 1991, there was nothing here. … I went to local schools, gave a few sample lessons, and people started coming. I now have about 200 students, ranging in age from 4 to adult.”
Ashdod, a coastal city south of Tel Aviv, is typical of the impact of Russian immigration on Israel’s demography and culture. The city nearly doubled in size during the 1990s and today has a population over 210,000, one-third of who are immigrants from Russia, and is Israel’s fifth-largest city.
The second factor that plays a role in ballroom dancing’s popularity in Israel is the 2005 launch of the television show Rokdim Im Kochavim (“Dancing With the Stars”). The highly rated show raises interest in ballroom dance.
The 2006 competition in Ashdod is won by Alexey Zakharin and Ekaterina Shvetsova of Russia. The top Israeli team, Anatoly Shenkel and Victoria Shupletsov, comes in seventh.
