30 years of IDO World Tap dance Championships
Linda Valjalo / Dubrovnik - Croatia Teacher | Choreographer | Team Captain | Studio owner | former dancer
I was born in Johannesburg, South Africa where my mother had a dance studio. Because of lack of babysitters my mom took me always to the dance studio to take care of me. The story is, I could tap dance before I could walk. My father was a Croatian living in South Africa and when I was about 7 years of age the family decided to move to Dubrovnik Croatia. Due to the big problems of the war after Yugoslavia has broken apart my family went back to South Africa to live in peace. I attended the studio of Mrs. Beverly Wood in Johannesburg - whom everybody in
the tap world in Riesa knows as an expert in tap dance. When I became 16 my family returned to Dubrovnik in Croatia where my mom, Shone Valjalo, opened her own studio in “Jazz and Tap”. I went to the capital Zagreb and attended the University to become a chemical engineer. Jasminka Zajec in Zagreb has been informed by my mom about it and therefor asked me if I could do tap classes in her school - because I did tap dance since such a long time. After hesitation I admitted to do “some” classes because my focus was on chemical engineering. Very fast the teaching developed to many classes per week where I taught the students who were no “children” anymore. Jasminka’s was very successfully taking care of the Children. My aim though was to become a chemical engineer and stop the dancing-business. After my exam - which went very well - a big pharmacy in Zagreb offered me a very interesting job. Parallel I was still teaching tap and accompanied my students to competitions. In 1995 the IDO European Tap dance Championships took place in Ljubljana, Slovenia. I admired a formation the Slovenian Choreographer, Mitja Popovski, has done and in my heart, I envied him that he can work his whole life in dance and I had to go to work in a pharmacy. This was the turning point: nobody forced me to become a chemical engineer working in a pharmacy and I decided to take the dance business. That’s it. I went back to my mom’s studio in Dubrovnik, “Tap and Jazz” and supported he r. Since ???? I run the studio. I came to Riesa in 2002 dancing in Jasminka’s formation and also with my students. Since that time we were participating with our dancers at the IDO World Tap dance Championships until 2019. Jasminka Zajec and I once visited the Tap dance Festival in Stockholm, Sweden where I learned so much about tap that I wanted to pass this knowledge also to the Croatian dancers. The fantastic US-American professional master I could work with opened my eyes. In 2013 we opened the “Dubrovnik Tap dance Festival” which has become a very successful Tap dance Festival with a lot of dancers from Croatia and the neighbouring countries as well dancers from all over the world. In 2020 we could not do it due to the corona-restrictions but we could fortunately run the Festival this August 2021 in Dubrovnik with the big support of the international tap-masters and the dancers. I write this in the time the “IDO World Tap dance Championships 2021” should have taken place - unfortunately they also had to be cancelled. So this week we talked with the dancers about “Riesa” and the “Tap worlds”. They all have so many wonderful and positive memories - not really much about their placements, but more about meeting their friends from all over the world, to compete with the best, the great atmosphere in the hall, the lights, the audience etc. etc. So we all hope we can meet each other in Riesa next year.
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