Listen to this story as it was recorded for WKNC’s Eye on the Triangle:
It started with a dare. Aksel Davis started dance lessons on a whim while in high school to challenge of his mother’s egging on to join a local dance class. Now, as the chief organizer of one of the biggest dance competitions on the east coast, Davis, a senior in electrical and computer engineering, is not joking about dancing.
“After my first lessons, I was addicted to ballroom dance,” Davis said. “I heard about the N.C. State dance program and when I came here the fall my freshman year, I joined.”
Dancing with Wolves, the primary ballroom-dance club at N.C. State, competes in various competitions throughout the school year and this weekend will host the 13th annual Triangle Open at the J.S. Dorton Arena.
This juried event will feature dancers of varying levels of experience and will also present two professional couples with national rankings.
“One of the dance couples that will be performing on Saturday night are Pasha Pashkov and Danilea Karagach,” Davis said. “They are the current U.S. ten dance champions, which means they do both the standard and the Latin dances. They are currently the number-one couple in the U.S. We will also have professional couple Dima and Erika Sazinas. They will perform some standard dances as well.”
Davis compared the caliber of these dancers to be “as good, if not better, than what you’d see on dancing with the stars.”
Although the event is a competition, Dancing with Wolves vice president Tan Tran said that Triangle Open is looking to be a spectator event.
“This year is the first year that we are inviting spectators,” Tran, a senior in aerospace engineering, said. “In previous years, the venues were way too small to accommodate viewers. But Dorton Arena with 5000 seats.”
Triangle Open will separate competitors in the two standard divisions of ballroom dance, syllabus and open.
“Syllabus is kind of where you learn all your basic figures,” Davis said. “We have different levels, including newcomer, bronze, silver and then gold levels.
After than, there are the open level divisions. Those levels will be novice, pre-championship and then championship.”
Triangle Open will offer all the ballroom dances that Dancing with Wolves practices, which include the two categories, standard and Latin.
“Standard dances are the waltz, tango, foxtrot and quickstep,” Tran said. “Latin is comprised of the cha-cha, rumba, samba and jive.”
The competition is not exclusive and welcomes an array of dancing abilities.
“I have been dancing since last semester,” Kristin Hartgrove, a junior in horticulture, said. “This will be my third competition. My various partners and I meet about three times a week. It’s good experience with following and leading.”
Triangle Open focuses on the competitive aspect of dancing and Davis said the nearly 300 competitors will vie for the $2,200 of prize money.
“We are still focused on our competitors and our members,” Tran said. “We have a lot of potential we want to tap into. The other major school in this event is UNC. I just want to smack them down this weekend.”
