It's great that ballroom dancing is being recognised. For many years ballroom dancers were misunderstood and other dance forms didn't want anything to do with us.
I have so many ways I can explain the ballroom scene. But the essence of the ballroom scene would be elegance, extravagance, and fabulousness to its 100 per cent. It's a place where you can be whoever you want to be inside of already being who you are.
I didnt learn until I was about 26 that my dad was a national ballroom dancing champion. He won loads of trophies. Im not sure why he was so quiet about his achievements. Maybe he thought ballroom dancing wasnt a manly thing to do.
I know certain pro dancers would like to dance with a woman because that is what tradition is, and it kind of makes sense but it is very much down to someone's personal opinion of what Ballroom and Latin dancing actually is.
Growing up in the Soviet Union, ballroom dancing wasn't the coolest thing to do. But that probably made me tougher, because it wasn't an easy task to do ballroom dancing and not get bullied. And I never got bullied in my life, even though I changed to five secondary schools in three different countries.
Being on 'Dancing with the Stars' is an amazing opportunity. I consider myself lucky to be a part of the show and to be able to share my passion and love of dance with such a huge audience while managing to train a few celebrities in ballroom dance along the way.
Both my brother and I have only had dance experience with ballroom dancing.
When I was growing up, Asians weren't known for dancing. I knew all my older aunts and uncles did, like, ballroom dancing and stuff. And then you saw all those dance crews, like Quest and Jabbawockeez, and now they're, like, known for dance.
My old dance teacher, Jimmy Wilde, a former European ballroom dancing champion, was so sophisticated.
When we're impatient with beginners around us, we would do well to sign up for a class in scuba diving, ballroom dancing or anything else totally brand-new for us.
I grew up dancing. When I was three years old, my mom would always watch Latin ballroom dancing competitions on PBS.
People talk about ballroom, but they don't really understand the history. Crystal Labeija, Avis Pendavis, Paris Dupree, Pepper LaBeija, Dorian Corey. These were the women that really brought ballroom to life.
My parents used to go ballroom dancing in their latter years, and it gave them so much pleasure.
Ballroom dancing is like being on Mars compared to what I've done throughout my life.
I love ballroom dance, my favorite style being the Argentine Tango.
At school people found it quite funny that I did ballroom, but I recently went to my school reunion and all they wanted to talk about was ballroom and 'Strictly.'
In some ways, what 'Hamilton' has done for Broadway shows - what it has done for the interpretation of history and how it fused all these worlds together into this modern, contemporary, hip-hop field, and delivered it in such an incredible way - we were inspired to do a similar thing for ballroom dancing and for dance shows in general.