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01 Декабрь 2010
“El Diablo Esta Suelto” (The Devil Is Loose) by Didio Barrera
Many years ago I attended a competition in Ireland and it was there that I was first introduced to “Team Diablo.” A group of energized young men and women all wearing the “Team Diablo” leisure jackets with their prominent Diablo logo. I immediately presumed at that time that this group must be some kind of a school or organization.
From the “Diablo” part I figured that it must be an Italian or Spanish group. I was a little puzzled at first by their Spanish or Italian name “Team Diablo” meaning a Devil Team? Was this part humor, a devilish team? Or was this a team to feared as many fear the “Devil?”
Since that time in Ireland I have continued to travel throughout the world covering many different events and almost at every stop and every turn there is always a “Team Diablo” member, sometimes a small group, sometimes in huge quantities, but year after year “Team Diablo” continues to grow bigger and bigger throughout the world of DanceSport. Last year at the Embassy Ball in California
where a Latin & Standard IDSF Grand Slam is held, I approached Mr. Cacciari, the creator and director and asked him for an interview. I wanted to know more about the man that heads and had the first vision of “Team Diablo” in his mind.
I had never really met Mr. Caccari, but on this occasion I found him to be very intense and focused on his views of dancing and after finding out a little about him one of my first questions to Mr. Cacciari was about the “Team Diablo” name.
“I can tell you
very clearly why the name was selected. The name constituted in two words, firstly ‘Team’ because I presume that in order to achieve the best results in competitions and the best ability as a dancer today it takes more than one person. You need a team of experts helping you to reach the best in your career. This is why we decided to call it a team, just to give the idea that it is important to have a team of experts.And ‘Diablo’ is coming from a legendary very powerful bull from Spain, from a “corrida” (a bull fight) and this bull was called “Diablo”. And the reason this bull was called “Diablo” was because nobody could ever beat this bull. In other words he was an unbeatable bull. So we thought that would be nice to take over this name, like the car “Lamborginni” did for their main car some years ago, they imported the “Lamborginni” name.
I felt this was very good motivation for the people and the kids dreaming about something that’s unbeatable. We did not want to use any names of dancers because this would have looked a little strange and funny. Surely we did not want to use our name. So that is the reason we called our organization Team Diablo from the beginning.”
So what in reality is this “Team Diablo” their website says this: “Team Diablo is an International Team of top level dancers in all age categories from all different countries all over the world. They are based in Molinella, close to Bologna in Italy. It is the biggest and most successful Dance-Sport Team Worldwide.
The main coaches are Davide & Olga Cacciari, also the founders of Team Diablo. A lot of other Dance-Sport trainers and coaches are involved within Team Diablo. They regularly organize workshops and trainingcamps where they invite other World-class dancesport trainers (most of them former WorldChampions in Standard and Latin) to come to Italy to give their students the best information available to improve their technique in dancing.
Team Diablo is famous for the former 3 time World Champion in the Standard Category Paolo Bosco & Silvia Pitton who turned Professional in 2009 and current World Champions Amateurs Benedetto Ferruggia & Claudia Koehler. But much more very good Ballroom dancers are involved within Team Diablo, both in Standard and Latin.
Team Diablo developed the very first and unique Dance Sport Academy, in which students learn all about dancing, physics, psychology,business, marketing and even mathematics and the English language. It givesyoung dancers a perfect platform to start asuccessful dancing career.”
One of the newest members to the group is in Canada, North America. This “Diablo” group is headed by Alexandre Chalkevitch and his family. This is the first time that many of our readers and citizens of North America have heard about the group and so it is only natural that many are asking what is this group about? Some are asking with suspicion others are welcoming. A well-known US couple Stephan Krauel & Denise Jourdaine admired the Diablo spirit and as Denise has told me a number of times that they hope to be the first to establish a “Team Diablo” here in the USA. The Canadian teams website tells us something very similar to that of the Italian Team:
“Team Diablo is the biggest dance team in the world. At this moment it is home to 2500 members and growing. Team Diablo is a collaboration of many studios from around the world, who work together with the goal of developing their dancing and teaching skills as well as furthering their understanding and knowledge of such a challenging sport as Dance-sport.Team Diablo has produced a huge number of top couples including many World Champions.
Among its members are: many times World Standard Amateur Champions Paolo Bosco and Silvia Pitton, the current World Standard Amateur Champions Benedetto Ferruggia and Claudia Kohler, World Latin Amateur Finalists Zoran Plohl and Tatyana Lahvinovitch as well as many others who consistently make semi-finals and quarter-finals of World Closed and Open Championships.
Team Diablo continues to constantly push the boundaries of ballroom dancing by conducting research together with the Institute of Medicine and Sport Science in Rome as well as working closely with the world’s leading teachers in both Standard and Latin. They frequently organize camps and workshops where the top teachers from England and other parts of the world come to share their knowledge and experience with all the members of Team Diablo.”
Here is more high praise from a couple that enjoys the benefits of being a Team Diablo member, they are Jeffrey and Eneth member of Team Diablo since 2006.
“We are the first Dutch couple to be member of Team Diablo! We go to Italy nearly every month to have lessons with our Team Diablo coaches and trainers, Davide and Olga Cacciari and our co-trainers and current WorldChampions: Benedetto Ferruggia & Claudia Koehler.”
This is all very high praise but in some camps “Team Diablo” is looked upon with some suspicion. Some believe that perhaps “Team Diablo” want to create a monopoly in dance. Others like this disgruntled blogger chosen from a number of bloggers on the internet feels that the team coaches and adjudicators cooperate with one another to push the team’s interest and not that of dance itself.
“Ignorant, uninformed, naive person would welcome the public show of appreciation to many invited British Coaches involved with Team Daiblo.
A sceptic would ask : Doesn’t Italy have enough talent to help Team Diablo in their progress ?
Is it not the same British Coaches who accept the employment teaching opportunities from the Team Diablo, who, in the function as adjudicators, have an opportunity (?obligation?) to better spot /notice / recognize their Team Diablo students on the European and British dance floors, and reward the use, application of their British teaching, in a completely unbiased way, not at all influenced by, and refusing any suggestion of a possible conflict of interest ?
As long as British Coaches involved with Team Diablo behave as is expected of them by their employers, the expressed sincere appreciation is well deserved.
Sceptics would not express appreciations too loudly not to make the competitors who are not a part of Team Diablo, raise their eyebrows when they lose the ‘precious’ recall marks to less able, but more recognized members of Team Diablo, whom the judges “recognize”.
Is it possible the sincere public show of appreciation is a subtle reminder to the British Coaches not to forget what Cacciare had done for them, the lucrative future teaching opportunities, and the invitations which could follow as long as they are on his team?”
This particular blogger was commenting on the praise to British coaches from Team Diablo. But you do not have to go far to hear an inflamed version of what “Team Diablo” is, especially now that the IDSF and WDC are not seeing eye to eye. There are many people that associate “Team Diablo” with the IDSF because the majority of their stars compete in the IDSF events.
It is not a unusual phenomenon to me to hear such strong criticism of such a successful, chain or group or persons. I have often heard many people voice strong opinions about chains or companies like Arthur Murray International and even GallaDance in Russia. So it’s only natural for people to get a little concerned when they do not “understand.”
Taking it with a “grain of salt” as they say here in America, I figure that there is no one better than the creator, Mr. Cacciari, to explain what “Team Diablo” is all about, so I asked.
“Team Diablo is a simple club. Many people think or might have a distorted idea as to what “Team Diablo” is. We believe that in today’s dancing it is important to have knowledge from experts, and when I mean experts I mean experts in many different areas. So we always use a lot of the top teachers in the world, like experts of technique in different departments of technique. Some of them are very expert in choreography, some very experts in leg and feet actions, some very experts in dynamics, some very expert in performance level. We also imported other different type of experts, for example like experts in bio-mechanics, in sports medicine, in psychology, and in theory and methods of practice, in physics. So we try to involve different top people in their branch in order to take all the benefits that they can offer in terms of quality. Because of course if you want to improve your quality as a dancer you have to think in many different areas and you also have to research. Like what we have been doing for almost ten years in the institute of medicine and sport in Rome, we have continued to research about the movement, what is mechanically the most efficient way to move. What is the source of power you should use in many different dance spaces. This is always something very important in my opinion to be aware and develop and you have to be very open minded in order to be able to take knowledge from people that are not dancers but they can be ingenious. For example, bio mechanical engineers. They might not be able to give you the right technique when dancing but when you explain to them what you are supposed to do, they can tell you exactly which way will create the most efficient movement. For example in knee work, foot work, shoulder work.
Or for example, speaking with a sports doctors about the anatomy of our body, they can give you some incredible ideas and advice as to what might be the best way to use your muscle system. For this reason I think it is important to have a team, for this reason it is important to have finance and enough money in order to involve the people and make the research with them on the top couples. We discovered over the last ten years a lot a lot of different new things or things that were developed but not developed enough in my opinion.
Mr. Caccari feels that in the past everything was more about feeling but now with so many advances we can rely on research in order to improve the quality of performance and so he has developed a team to research and study dance to be able to produce a greater quality of dancing.
He also feels that today, you cannot just rely on feeling alone you have to go further into the world of understanding here is what he had to say about feeling verses understanding “for example, in those days my personal career and my personal improvement was based a lot on feelings.
But it is scientifically proven that the feelings that you have that we can call scientific and internal perception is not going together with external perception. The external perception is what you see from outside and there is always an angle created by these two factors and this is scientifically proven.
I remember one of my teachers used to say ‘don’t always trust your feelings,’ and he was really correct in telling me this, because realistically sometimes the feeling is not exactly telling you what is happening. So for this reason it is important to investigate much more deeply and so taking the knowledge of top teachers in the world mainly from England and trying to elaborate their knowledge and upgrade their knowledge with the use of some engineers and people like that, it’s an incredible experience. In this work we are very dedicated.”
By this point he really has my attention, it is quite fascinating to me that anyone would have such a passion for dance to want to research ten dances to such a high level. I began to wonder what sort of team he has? He must have a huge team hundreds of people working in many different departments of dance and so I was very curious on how the departments work. He of course was very forthcoming, “we have a selection of people that do different things. For example we have a teacher inside our infrastructure, Fabio Bosco & his wife Marina. Their expertise is what we call first level technique, and that is the
technique book and so they teach all the couples the fundamental technique, exactly what is written in the technique books originally. Some of these things are probably not much use today but it is important in order to develop your skills to start from the origin. And if you want to develop something you really need to have a very clear understanding of what was really in the beginning. So they spent in the last ten years hundreds of lessons around the world with big experts in technique in both ballroom and Latin. And we want for example that all the top couples that work inside Team Diablo sustain examination in the fundamental technique, ballroom and Latin both groups. Even if you only dance ballroom you have to also learn the fundamental technique in Latin because we feel that many things are linked and for knowledge it is important to know both. Probably you cannot dance today some of the things exactly as they are reported but I repeat as I just said it is important to know exactly what was the past. Because only by understanding and studying the past you can understand the present and you can develop the future.
We also have some experts in strategy and planning, because of course it’s also important to plan the career and it’s not so easy in today to just do it. Yes it is important that you enjoy your
lessons and you enjoy your dancing and eventually you become one of the top dancers in the world or the world champion, but we feel that it’s always important to teach these people to
plan. To plan their career, to plan their future, their life, their work - planning seems to be something very simple but realistically it is one of the main keys in many different aspects. And
you need a lot of experts that are able to guide you in some decisions or some thoughts and so it is not something that is as easy as it might seem. So this is realistically the foundation of
Team Diablo.
Mr Caccari then spoke about a program he started 16 years ago within “Team Diablo”, a program that resembles a university where their top students with the highest understanding and
knowledge of dance can attend once a week to hear lectures from many different experts in may different areas such as sport medicine, physical and biomechanical engineering, psychology,
etc. this he says is important because it opens the young peoples’ minds. They improve their knowledge, they have a different point of view and very importantly, the young people become
more cultured.
“Because we think being intelligent, being cultured is a very important thing. And we always believe that you cannot be a champion if you are completely uncultured and stupid. For their future we feel that if they have a lot of culture and if you are an intelligent person and if you are ready to study and you learn how to study it’s always an advantage and we really believe in that. For this reason we started this academy 15 years ago and it has run for us quite successfully and I must say that all the top couples that join Team Diablo join this academy that takes place every Wednesday
in our school. So we have one room dedicated only for that where it is set up like a university room with tables and chairs and we are very happy about this way of proceeding with things.
Probably some of the people can presume that this is all bull@*!@ and that this is not important . But we really believe this is the key point and the art of our Team Diablo Club. So this is
what Team Diablo is. ”I tried hard to pin down Mr. Caccari on the number of people who are affiliated with “Team Diablo,” but this was not something he wanted there are over “2,500 members and growing.”
Mr. Caccari claims that the majority of their members are of the basic level of dancing and that, “If you look inside team Diablo as a general structure it is of course quite a big number but that includes all level of dancers from the beginning to the very top. For that reason we have to divide these two things because high competitive ranking is not what is the most. Of course the top class dancers are a smaller selection of what is the entire structure. I would say they are about 10% of the entire structure and that is why I say that the entire number is ok and important but it’s not the must important thing. Because realistically what we are speaking now and today is about the top class dancing and the top class dancing are not big numbers around
the world. So we deal with probably around 30 or 40 top class couples between ballroom and Latin.”
I’m still quite convinced that the number of couples that they teach must me astronomical not even counting the other affiliate countries that have signed up for this team so I tell him you obviously must have a huge pool of couples in order to produce so many outstanding couples and he agree. “Yes, I must say this is true, in the beginning when I started this school 23 years ago it was much harder because like you say if you have only 10 couples it’s very difficult to have some 10 incredibly talented couples so probably over time you might have none or one.
If you have one hundred couples then you are more lucky and are probably able to find four or five or ten with talent, and this for sure it is an important thing. But I must stress that this is important but today, in our structure, not the main focus. Because some of the top couples now also come from different clubs and different schools and we don’t take all out top couples only from our pool. At times even different clubs and different schools might ask us for help, so there we just have a friendly cooperation with Team Diablo in order to be able to give their club members a different type of structure and this is how we are growing. This is why out top couples do not only come from our pool of people.”
As you can see I tried, but he still could not give me a straight answer as to how many dancers are a part of this incredible team, so I moved on to my next topic. As someone that has grown up with the industry, recently I have witnessed a deterioration of relations and a clash between the new and the old. In other words the famous good teachers from the past are not in favor of many of the changes happening in dancing today.
And it seams to me that a lot of this has to do with this new kind thinking, innovation and structure. Some of the dissatisfaction seems to point towards this type of innovative growth. This prompts me to ask Mr. Caccari why he thinks this is happening?Is this fear? Or is it jealousy?
“Honestly thinking I cannot see what you are telling me. I must say that in the past we had some incredibly good teachers in Italy that put lots of time and did an incredible job. I remember people like Adalberto and Lala DeLorto I remember people like Giancarlo and Luiza Balbierri, Giordano & Katia Vanone, I remember these people as really good top, top teachers. Caroline Smith and Tino Miqueloto. So I admired what they did because as you say twenty-five years ago the Italian situation was very difficult because we did not have any good couples.
In today’s scene the younger competitors came on the scene like myself Massimo Georgianni , Augusto Schiavo, Luca Barrichi, Fabio Selmi, I was out of all this people probably competitively the least successful. I admire Luca & Lorraine Barrichi, Massimo Georgianni & Alessia Manfredini or Augusto Schiavo & Katerina Arzenton have done in their careers, they became world champions, they created a new view for Italy. Really Augusto & Katerina were pioneers in this, they were the first from Italy to become world champions. I cannot forget this. I presume that in today days in someway it is easier to become a world champion in Italy than what it was fifteen years ago when Augusto & Katerina won their first title as world champions or when Massimo & Alessia did. So they did tremendous work. They were fantastic dancers and I always admired them and I must also say that I was always a little envious of them because I could not beat them in competition. But I have to be very honest with myself and they were better as competitors. On one side of myself I was a little envious because I wanted to be first and not sixth for example, but on the other side I admired and I really respect and understand that they were much better.
And Luca and Lorraine Barrichi, although they danced for England, he is Italian. And I feel he is an Italian a part of Italy. Incredible dancers as well they really created a new fashion
in dancing they imported into the mind of the people a new inspiration, a new idea. All these couples really did a great job, like Fabio Selmi and Simona Fancello, they were not champions
but were in the middle of the final, but again that was another fantastic couple. And we were all of the same group. I was probably as I said before the worst one result wise in relation to the others, but I presume that they all created a new statement a big change. So of course they today influence the dancing not just in Italy but all over the world and I do not think that what they are doing is not something that is going back or is going on the wrong direction.
I think it is going in the right direction. I think it is an improvement. I think it is something that is creating a new view for the future. What the past people in Italy did was a great job, but what these experts and champions have imported with their own quality, with their own teaching I presume is also an important thing. I admired and I look at the future in a very positive way. I do not think we can stop progress and I think that part of the progress that you see on the floor today is just because these people came through. Even myself! I was fifth or sixth in the World Championship when they were first and second and I even think that perhaps even me and my partner contributed in some way to this change. I do not see a change coming for the worse. I see a change coming for the best. I can definitely see that things are changing but in all things are they are changing they never stay the same.
I’m not sure if Mr. Caccari is really that naïve or is trying to avoid my question, but I now once again try a more specific question, the tango. Let’s take for instance the tango. I think the tango has been revolutionized by the Italians emotion. But somehow it has turned into a fight. For example, I remember watching Massimo Giorgianni doing very unique and incredible work in the tango and people turning their heads away saying this is not a tango. He seemed to be winning the audience but the establishment clenches when innovation comes up. More recently lets talk about one of Team’s Diablo’s best, Paolo Bosco & Anna Pitton, by the way one of my favorite couples in standard, but they offer another example of the old establishment disapproving of what they do.
Davide Caccari: “Of course when you put on the market something that is more revolutionary, more advanced, the first tendency for people is to try to avoid the problems and jump to the conclusion that ‘it’s terrible, it is no good.’ I myself do not think this way. I have a very open mind and I think I’m very open for progress. We cannot always stay the same, as I said before. I respect the past, I admire past champions.
When I watch old videos of very old famous dancers around 1955, 1965, 1970,1980, I admire what they did and they were at that time the very best and at that time very inspiring and marvelous. But like every thing in life we must move on. We cannot just close up and live in the past.
This would be an incredible mistake, and of course not only the tango has changed, every dance has changes. Life changes, human beings change, technology changes.
What we know today is not what we knew thirty years ago, so the skill of the competitors changes, the ability of the dancers change. Thirty years ago a top pro could be fifty years old, today you cannot afford this anymore, because the dancing is so much more dynamic it’s so much more developed in many different areas and skills that you need to be more fit in order to support the dancing of today. You could say I think it’s too fast, I think it’s too dynamic, we need to go to the past, why? I presume that these changes don’t come because one person wants a change. This happen because naturally everyone has put an effort in order to make a change.
I think in this answer he was telling me that the changes of today have occurred not because of his or Team Diablo’s dedication to research towards improvements in the future, but because of the past champions. So I ask him this and his response was “Yes! Of course, the present champions have been built by the previous champions. I always admired the previous champions because they are able to teach even better work than when they were dancing. When I watch a couple today in 2009 of course this couple is better than the couple in 1999. But who taught the couple in 2009? It was probably the champion of 1999, so I admire these people because they put a lot of effort in order to develop what they achieved. And I must say that including ourselves of course, I presume we are all doing a successful, good job.
So if things move forward and become more dynamic, bigger, more speedy, I have nothing to complain with that. I always think that the fundamental actions the basic actions are the
foundation. So we need to study daily these things, many hours per day we need to study the basic format, we need to study the basic fundamentals.
I really believe in this. I built up all my career on that and I really believe in that direction. But this does not mean that when I go on the floor to perform I have to necessarily do only the basic routine or only the basic steps.
I have to use the basic principals but I have to use the basic principals in my opinion in order to develop the best choreography I can with the best inspiration and motivation with the best
musicality I can.
And this of course is depending on the ability and the skills of the dancers that are performing. Because not every dancer is the same, depending on the proportion of the dancers, depending on the skills that they have. Like you said, Massimo and Alessia, they were fantastic dancers, very musical, the speed that they had at that time in their era was incredible. They probably doubled up everybody else’s speed in quickstep and tango. Why? Because their skills permitted them to do that. And I didn’t think that was disgraceful for that time, I thought that it was always a different way, very progressive.
Of course different couples like Augusto Schiavo and Luca Baricci had different structure, more classical body lines. They also too developed different skills and different abilities creating something with more volume, probably slower but always full of emotion, of quality, just a different way. And that is what is the beauty of dancing. And the quality of the teachers is realistically being able to take out the best skills of that particular couple. I would not like to see in the future ten couples dancing all the same, it’s very nice to see the different skills. I saw yesterday evening a fantastic competition right here at the Embassy Ball (The Open Professional Standard 2009), where you had different couples on the floor with completely different body structures,
completely different body skills, completely different ability. One couple chose very slow work, very basic work. One other chose very quick work, very sharp, very ‘spinny’ and for me really all these performances were brilliant, fantastic, completely different. Very difficult to judge sometimes.
Having been a judge for a while, I totally understand Mr. Caccari’s point of view when it comes to judging. However, as I said to him sometimes, especially if the dancers are brilliant there is very little difference between them, it is almost a matter of taste. You either like Greek food or French food.
“Yes and no, in my personal opinion. The time when the judge and the teacher use to say ‘this the way I see things, it’s my way.’ I presume this is past. Not so many people today keep saying this, or keep doing this, in my opinion, of course I do not know, but this is what I think. Because I think that for the judging, everything is developed.
The judges of today are judging using different skills than the judges of 60 or 70 years ago. Of course. So I’m sure that the judges today take full considerations of all the setup, totally inside the box, all the elements. We cannot just say, I used to dance all the basic and I only mark the couples that use the basics. I used to dance very inspiring choreography and I only mark inspiring choreography. I presume from what I see that the vast majority of the top coaches and judges of today look at all the couples with a much wider range of perspective and they really seem in my opinion to have a much better understanding of the different skills of the individual couples, and they really, in my opinion, are able to balance all of these things when it comes
to a final judgment. Realistically, I can see some couples that might be very classical and basic winning, I can see sometimes some couples very inspiring, very powerful winning. So this just
proves the point that all my colleagues, the vast majority, consider all these aspects when making a judgment.
So as you just heard, Mr. Caccari has complete confidence in the judges’ skills and the judging system, but considering the times I think that the world does not look as simple as he might
see it. Having to judge six or seven couples at one time in a minute and a half is very difficult. My famous example of this is when I saw a champion fall three times in the jive yet they
received a full majority of firsts. Judging might have evolved slightly by adding some rules to the game but we have very little criteria. It is still one impression against another.
As Mr. Caccari mentioned the world continues to grow and dancing has grown in huge numbers in the past 30 years. So the more people the more problems and issues that arise. Right
now there are a number of huge issues dividing the dancesport community or as we used to call it the ballroom world.
There are issues between the IDSF, the organization that manages what we use to call amateurs and who are now called athletes and the WDC, the organization that manages the professionals. In my opinion their disagreements and divisions are continuing to deepen. So deep are they sometimes that many competitors, professional and athletes have often complained to me, especially those in the higher levels of dancing, about the uncomfortable atmosphere they now have to deal with. So I figure that it must be very hard for a managing director like Mr. Caccari who has to explain all this to those young people that just want to dance. There have been times when perhaps a large boycott of events has been issued by a ruling body in different countries and I presume, being a director of such a prominent group, he must now navigate these murky waters around the world. I asked Mr. Caccari how he felt about all this and this is what he had to say: Realistically, I must say that it is much easier than what most people think and presume.
Because at the end of the day it does not matter which group I belong to it does not matter which idea I have. When the couples go on the floor to perform this is what I do and this is what all my are professional. I do not think it matters to us, we each judge what that couple is performing. I am a great believer in this and I presume that all of these top teachers and top judges around the world, most of them were all past champions, and they know the effort you have to put to achieve that goal and I presume that they act like I act when you go on the floor, you just judge the performance of the couples. You do not take under consideration which group this couple belongs to, which political idea this couple has, all the mess that is going on in this country that country. I presume and I can still see this has not really infected the judgment and the result of competitions. So I’m very simple on this issue. Yes, probably there are a lot of difficulties around the world and I can see this. I live in Italy where I can say we have some of these difficulties but I presume that this is all going back only to what this person believes not in the dancing world but what this professional believe, in the structure means how they see this structure in the future. Should we join this, would it be good to go to the Olympics or not to go to the Olympics? So it’s going back to their personal opinion on how to manage this business and the management in this business should not be confused with the judgment in a competition.
This is all very well but you would have to do as Mr. Caccari does in other subjects, a scientific study to know if some of these issues are or are not carried out onto the floor itself affecting the young dancers. When you have a management that believes very strongly in these issues and they are the same people that are involved in meetings and decisions upon which their entire life, their entire career has been built, how then in the next moment are they able to take a pen and have a clear conscience when judging?
So I then asked Mr. Caccari to explain to me how he is able to teach these young people or explain to them how to ignore these issues while they are trying to be creative and dance?
But like I said to you, I presume that all these people cannot be this stupid to make these mistakes. We all scream, we all become angry, we all fight, we all try to save our rights, we all said what we like what we dislike but when we are in the competition floor we have a big responsibility. And we know that if we try to destroy someone else the first thing we do is destroy ourselves. So it would be very embarrassing for a professional to try to destroy somebody else, in trying to win this battle you destroy yourself. So I presume that not one of us in our profession are so stupid to really believe that they should really go on this direction. Or probably a very minimum number of people would think in this way, but the vast majority would not think this way. Because they know exactly that it is too dangerous, the best dancer should win on the floor. And of course you can have a bad result, a good result this can depend on many different variables and this is understandable, but over a long period of time the best dancer would always win. So I’m a great believer that you don’t need to spend a lot of effort fixing this. Because this is something that does not need to be fixed, and people are intelligent enough as judges to understand this, they have too much to lose in order to try to create problems. Of course when we are not judging and discussing things, including myself, we all have our own opinion but this does not mean I have to put my opinion on the floor. I mean, as an administrator or manager, my opinion should stay with my opinion when I have a meeting discussing with persons disagreeing with people, not bringing that on the floor and marking the couples badly because they belong to a different group or event. This would look rather stupid and I don’t think the majority of the top people I know and the top people the people that trained me in my career are thinking this way. This can be the outside perception probably, people can perceive this, they can presume that these human beings are judging and so they are affected by that. But I presume that more or less this is very difficult to do.
Is it? Is it as simple as this? And are people able to leave their problems at home when they sit on the bench to pass judgment? Or are our minds clouded by our experiences outside the dance floor? Your guess is as good as mine and I presume that this is one of the reasons Dancesport is yet to be seen in the Olympic Games. The Olympic Games I think is a fantastic idea and I hope I live to see it happening. I honestly think that if this dream were to become a reality there would be very few people that would not applaud, including myself. However, there are still many obstacles that stand in the way of these dreams, the judging for one, and most importantly the now old argument - is it a sport or is it an art? One of the major divisions between many of our peers is the new definition of Dancesport. A huge group feels that Ballroom Dancing is an art and it must be treated as one, the other side feel that it is a sport and that there is no question about it especially when even the name has been changed from Ballroom to Dancesport. In fact some of the world sports committees have already accepted Ballroom dancing as a sport. For many years now Dancesport games have been held at the well know Good Will Games held every four years, and possibly the second biggest games in the world. The next Dancesport Good Will game will be held in my country of Colombia in 2013 and I hope to be there. I have a slight suspicion at the time of the interview that Mr. Caccari believes Ballroom dancing to be more of a sport but I must still ask him personally this question. Is it a sport or is it an art?
I’m a great believer that it is both. You see dancing is an art because you should move people inside, this is the goal of a dancer. The goal of the dancer should be moving the public, moving the people inside, make the people clap for the performance you are putting on the floor. Why the people clap? It’s a very difficult issue to explain, but they can clap for many different reasons, you can inspire them in many different ways. There is not only one way to move them. So you can inspire them because you are the slowest on the floor, you can inspire them because you are the fastest on the floor, you can inspire them because you are the must powerful on the floor, you can inspire them because you are the most beautiful on the floor and so on. So you can inspire people for many different reasons and each of them for me is fine. But we cannot exclude that it is also a sport. You have to be fit, you have to rehearsed, you have to practice many hours per day etc. Why? Because it is requested in today’s dancing with the dynamics involved to be physically fit. Like I said everything develops, probably fifty years ago, six years ago it was less sportive. But today it is very sportive, we cannot ignore this fact. If we make a very simple test, if we measure the quantity of oxygen that your lungs can breath in an out it would show that it is a sport. We very clearly find out through dancers and I made this research, not only on my dancers but we took dancers from twelve couples from different schools. And we find out that the level for the man that took this test is around 60 and the footballers that are playing in our national team is also roughly 60. So this very simple test proves the point that we cannot say that dancing is not a sport.
Why? Because a scientific test proves that the amount of energy and the amount of power that is requested form our muscles is tremendous and for this reason we cannot only presume that Dancesport is an art. Dancesport is a sport with an art form, and this is not just my opinion or your opinion, this is scientifically proved and when there is scientific proof we cannot disagree, we have just to say it is like that. And it does not matter from whom these couples train, what I just said is proof that this couple has developed inside his body very particular skills, skills like a sportsman. And so a top class dancer should be treated like a sportsman. This does not mean you have to run, sometimes it’s about controlling and so you spend a lot of energy and a lot of power in order to control. Can you imagine to do and over a hover corte in Ballroom, standing up on a toe of one foot. You need an incredible control, especially if you can imagine a fast variation in quickstep and you have to just stop. You need an incredible control, and incredible strength in the muscles, in the system in order to control the stillness of your body. So you really have to be able to control that and in order to do that you need a lot of effort in your muscles. Imagine when you dance a three step and you want to look the slowest on the floor you need massive control, you want to swing around the floor so you want free movement but you want to look the slowest. So you body is running but your legs are hardly walking in slow motion and so imagine the tremendous amount of control that in our system we need to have?
So if somebody could think that we! Not we, (We laugh) but that dancers of today are not sportsmen they are wrong. And this does not mean that couples should belong to one association or another (We laugh again) this is not connected with that, this is connected with a fact that it is an art because we have to move people, we have to be musical we have to inspire. But in order to do that we have to use a lot of strengh so we also use our body to its very limit. I do not think that these couples that we saw yesterday evening are sweating at the end of the waltz because the dance is so fast. I think they are sweating because of the tremendous amount of control they have to have. And for sure you have to develop your skills as a sportsman. So is it a sport? Yes! It is a sport, definitely dancing is a sport but it is not only a sport. It’s a very particular type of sport with art included. So it’s a very beautiful sport it’s very unique, because no other sport can put together these two elements so closely. At the end of the day I presume everything is going back to having incredible quality, technical quality to perform in the best way you can in the artistic part but also you should train good enough in a sensible way to create and be ready with your physique to support the pressure of the competition that is not basically in terms of speed but in terms of control.
I think Mr. Caccari is absolutely right, having now traveled for a number of years looking at dancing, in some areas what I used to know asinto a sport. The arenas, the benches, the popcorn, the sporting crowd in jeans but this is just the superficial transformation. The dancers are also doing things that were not possible to do 15-20 years ago. They are spinning more, doing harder maneuvers to the point that it most certainly is looking like sport. And why not? Especially if we are able to communicate and touch more fans. I have also been to venues like the Kremlin, the Internationals, the Embassy Ball and our own US Championships where dancing is treated with elegance as if you are going to a ballet recital. The dancers, mainly the professionals in some of these venues, have shown me a beauty and touched me in a way that cannot be described. Yes, they are not doing the hundred pirouettes and spins on their ears, but at times made something out of silence, or were so experienced and musical they turned a heal turn into a magic step. At the WDC Professional European Latin in the Kremlin this year I was so touched I was left speechless. And even in one of the IPDSC events run in Spain, the Pro Latin, I was touched like this by a couple of professional dancers (See the article in Dance Beat World entitled, “Down Deep and Dirty).
So perhaps there is room for both the “quadruples” and acrobatics – obviously a sport but also the more mature dancer, the dancer that has lived through many years of understanding that can touch us with a rumba walk, or a reverse wave done with such magic and precision and elegance that is almost worth taking off our jeans and putting on our tuxedo out of respect for this magnificent, beautiful art. Yes, I agree with Mr. Caccari it is both and they can both live together side by side sharing their knowledge and understanding even if separate. I found myself very enlightened by Mr. Caccari’s philosophy of dance. As I looked at him throughout the interview, always talking with so much passion with so much energy almost as if he himself is still competing on the floor, I can’t help but wonder about the man. When did he start dancing, and what were some of the experiences that turned him into this studious genius? Mr. Caccari started dancing at the age of six but as he told me, not by choice. Unlike many of the other well known dancers in Italy his parents were not teachers of dance nor were they heavily involved in ballroom dance, but they wanted him to dance very much, especially his mother “my mother impose dance on me, I did not want to dance at all, at the end of 6 all my friends laughed about my dancing because it was a thing for girls in Italy not for men.” His first teacher in ballroom was Ferdinando Gardelin. He has fun memories of him one that he found peculiar was the fact that this man never took dance lessons he always study through books, as Mr. Caccari calls them, “English book.” He smiles when he talks about his beginnings in Latin. “To give you a funny example we used to dance rumba and cha cha cha on beat one. So we all break on beat one instead of beat two. So we were dancing, of course, all out of time, but that was what our teacher taught us, what they though was right. I of course do not want to blame the teachers of that area. I have a great memory of this Ferdinando Gardelin, for me he was a great teacher a great man.”
He does not know how Augusto Schiavo, Luca Barrichi or some of the other well known dancers started their dancing careers but he remembers being friends with all of them and having some terrific good times. He also fondly remembers as he put it, his first English teacher who was Lindsey Hillier “she was my first English teacher and I have a very good memory about her. She taught me a lot of things. She was an incredibly good teacher, like she is till today.” At the age of 18, 19 he and his partner decided to go to England and two of their first teachers were Bill & Bobbie Irvine MBE. He danced with this partner till the age of 26 and they reached the semifinal of three major events, Blackpool, the UK and the Internationals. At the age of 27 he made his final change of partnership and he started dancing with Olga. “Funny enough when Olga started training in England her first teacher was also Lindsey Hillier. So this was funny, so we both have very good memories about Lindsey and we are very good friends with her.”
Olga and Davide have been together ever since that time. They are married and have a child. Their biggest accomplishment on the dance floor according to Davide was a world championship and Blackpool (the British Open). “Our main results were when we achieved fourth place in a ten dance world championships and we also achieved the final in Blackpool, I think seven years ago around 2002 or 2001 not quite sure of the date. The following year we retired in the team match in Blackpool. We decided then that we just wanted to dedicate our time to our career of teaching.” Contrary to what some people think Davide never left Italy or moved to Russia. Yes, he did represent Russia with Olga and taught in her native land at her studio but was always based in Italy. At the age of 18 before meeting Olga Mr. Caccari started a dance school and once he and Olga retired from competition they both decided to concentrate on their teaching and their school “I always liked to teach both styles Ballroom and Latin and we’ve always dance throughout or career both styles. And for this reason we thought it was good idea at that time to invest a lot of time in teaching and we did.” So there you have it, that is how Davide’s dream of “Team Diablo” got started. Davide hungered for information and complete dedication to studying Dancesport has propeled his venture to great heights. His “Team Diablo” is no longer a dream it’s a reality with teams all across the world including North America. I ask Mr. Caccari what his vision was for the future of Dancesport and this is what he had to say. “My vision is that, today’s couples are much more developed in skill and physics compared to my era and in the past eras. And I presumed that there is a lot more that we can do in order to achieve even better quality in dancing. What I mean as better quality is to develop even more the skill that the couples have today on the floor, meaning being able to inspire even more people, through many different things. As I told you before there’s not only one way there are many different ways. We cannot live in the past we have to live in the future. We have to use the knowledge of the past to continue our study to continue researching. When I have lessons with some of the teachers they inspire me all the time with the knowledge they have and they motivate me in studying even more, to try to find out how we can develop even more those skills.”
Mr. Caccari is completely astonished by how far dancers and Dancesport have come and he feels that with more research and an open mind the dancers of the future will be amazing. “I really believe that if we continue to research and study in following this route the dancers of 2020 will be amazing. They will be even be better than what we could imagine and I hope to arrive there to see how dancing will evolve. I think it will be fascinating and I look forward to seeing it happen. So my view of the future of dancing is amazing and great.”After talking about dancing for nearly two hours, it struck me that Mr. Caccari is not only passionate about Dancesport but it seemed to me that his whole life revolves around dancing and so I boldly ask. Is there a time when you and Olga say enough now it’s time for fishing, swimming, bicycling or something else?
This is an important question. Really dancing is our life and I think that for the majority of the people that live for dancing feel like I feel. We are all crazy we are not normal people, this is what realistically I believe. In a good way, I mean not in a bad way, we don’t eat bread we eat waltz and samba. We don’t drink water and wine we drink rumba and foxtrot. This is why it’s very difficult to divide life in two separate spaces. This is my dance life this is my normal life. I have to say I have no normal life my life is dancing. So I’m always around dancers, dancing competitors, teachers, colleagues and I am happy to be like that. So for me coming here to the Embassy Ball, in wonderful surroundings, a fantastic, brilliant hotel, everything is marvelous. We are together with a lot of friends, it’s a holiday. But someone could think, but you are working all day long from 8 o’clock in the morning, you are judging and this and that. Yes! But this is my holiday, this is my life, I enjoy doing this, it’s a break from my teaching. When I’m teaching I think that the work is judging and when I’m judging I think that the work is teaching. And I think that the vast majority of the dance teachers think this way, the majority of dancers think this way.
Dancing is our life, it’s inside our DNA, we cannot just cut this or take it out. When we sometimes have a day off, my wife Olga and our son Michael at the end of the day we find out that we have only spoken about dancing, and it was supposed to be a day off. When we go to the supermarket, we do not speak about the meat we have to buy we speak about dancers and dancing. And this is work this is a wonderful work. Yes as you say before sometimes there are disagreements with people, sometimes there is fighting, there are different types of battles. But this is part of the game I presume, that all these people that try to battle and try to make small wars are always for the benefit of dancing, and so I presume that after all this it will all be even better than before. There is in my personal view, in our personal life there is no other life there is the life or the dancer, the crazy life of a dancer. Because if you probably ask me to do something like I am doing, I probably would not accept to do it, but because I do I think it’s OK for me. So I live like in a dream and I think like the majority of us dancers live a dream, a dream of dancing. Before you are a dancer, then you are a teacher, you become a coach, then a judge you might become a manager. And everything is changing but it is inside the same box, and it is inside all your life. If I was not in this business I do not know what I would do. If I would go one week to an island where I could not think about dancing I would probably go crazy. So I think we are crazy, all of us are crazy about dancing and this is exactly what makes this business so special. And this is what makes our people so special, all of us want to win all of us want to be better than the others but at the end of the day we all have great respect for one another. And we are like, in some respect, big children sometimes we have envy, sometimes we have jealousy, sometimes we are happy, sometimes we are unhappy. But at the end of the day we are very happy because we are like this.”
That I think was what I would call a heartfelt, honest answer and he does have a point, most of us not only work in the world of dance but live dance. Hearing him talk made me wonder about his child and curios to know what are his expectations for his son in the dance world, does he wants Michael to become a competitor himself?
“I presume that I would encourage him because dancing is a wonderful world. My mother encouraged me and I thank her ever since that she did this, but I would probably not oblige my son, but I would of course try to encourage him. If in the future he does not like it he can do what he wants it’s his life, but I would encourage him very strongly like my mother did with me because I find this to be a wonderful business. You can say like you mentioned before there is a number of battles, arguments but you really have to see the best side of this. This business is keeping young people involved 16,17,18, 20,15, 8 years old, all away from the street, away from drugs, away from smoking away from crime and away from many terrible things in life today. So I would say that this is an incredible world. So this small war or battle that one section has against the other is absolutely nothing in relation to what could be in the normal world. So I presume that I will encourage my son to do it, I will. If he wants to do it is OK if he does not it’s also fine it does not really matter. But I presume that it is my duty to encourage him like my mother did to me.”
And with this I ended a very interesting conversation with the creator of “Team Diablo” one of the largest and fastest growing associations in Dancesport today. These organization or franchise is not just longer in Italy as I said before, it is starting to set roots in different parts of the world. They are very organized and as you heard Mr. Caccari is very motivated and hungry for research and development. So is it a danger? A Monopoly? Or just one more step in the development of ballroom dance? Who knows, only time will tell, all we know for sure is that “El Diablo Esta Suelto!” In English, the devil is loose. I want to personally thank Mr. Caccari for taking his time to talk to me so we can all have a little knowledge of this innovative team that is “Team Diablo.”
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