30 years of IDO World Tap dance Championships
The very active Mayor, of a nearby city from Dresden, Riesa , Mr. Wolfram Köhler , contacted MW to get IDO Championships intop his new sports hall - “ something for the women in Riesa ” . Mr. Köhler had the vision and was also successful, with his great passion and love, to turn Riesa into a sport city. The hall was named “WM - Halle” (World Championship hall) with the proud slogan “ Here we make world champions ”. We were very happy about his offer to run these two most prestigious IDO Championships, Show dance and Tap dance, as separate events in his sport city. So we started with “tap” in December 1997 in the smaller City hall STERN, which turned out to be very much too small for our event but enabled the IDO World Tap dance Championship to come to the sport city of Riesa and to develop such a great athmosphere for the dancers and the audince during the years until tody. The other hall, WM-Hall, was totally booked. The “Stern” was a hall with about 600 seats, a balcony and a nice stage. Not at all enough space for the dressing rooms (the “poor” Canadians got th e heating room to for dress changes ….) but the athmospehre was so intense and great because the “Stern” was so packed and everybody loved the excellent tap shows onstage that the applause was much longer than normal. We “lost” one hour upon longer a pplause and the fire brigade came three times because the smoke-detectors gave loud alarm due to the heat on stage. Our most experienced stage master Mr. Toby Bassen sent them back three times so we could go on. No dancer or the audience got to know. This for sure was an unforgettabel event, a true World Championship in a much too small venue.
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Photo 110 - the Flyer - Bernd Paffrath - Photo by B. Paffrath
Photo 111 - The Flyer - Photo ST/Gröning
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