Passion is a quality that creates suffering. A phrase that could not be more fitting for 18 students from ETH Zurich and the University of Zurich. They mainly know each other from the student organisation "tanzquotient.org" and have dedicated their free time to Latin dancing. However, they do not indulge in couple dancing, but are now a Latin formation. A form, nota bene, that is rather unknown in Switzerland and is not (yet) offered as a competitive discipline in the STSV. This starting position and other special circumstances have demanded an enormous amount of creativity, resilience and perseverance from these young people in recent months and weeks.
Christoph Hellings, who works in research at ETH Zurich, brought the formation virus from Germany into student circles. "I set up a show dance group in autumn 2022, which has since had several performances, including at the Zurich Polyball," he says proudly. As his members attend various university courses during the week, Sunday evenings turned out to be the ideal training evening. However, as the city of Zurich does not want to make any sports halls available at this time, Hellings has to temporarily switch to a sufficiently large hall in the Zurich City indoor swimming pool for the weekly training sessions. "We now pay an entrance fee for each visit to the indoor pool so that we can dance together for four hours," smiles Hellings.
This motivated group soon developed the desire to take part in competitions as well as performing in shows. They obtained the necessary licences through the STSV club Dance Unlimited Zürich (DUZ), and the Swiss Dance Sports Association supported this idea to the best of its ability from the very beginning. Hellings, who had danced as a formation dancer in Wasserburg in previous years, then registered the new DUZ formation with STSV support in the Landesliga Süd Bayern Latein, so that nothing stood in the way of their participation in the first tournament at the end of January. "But it was an adventurous journey," reports Hellings. "We wanted to travel to Leipzig by train, but due to the German train drivers' strike that lasted several days, we had to switch to a Flixbus at short notice." The organisers then organised a few volunteer drivers for the rest of the journey to the tournament venue in Altenburg.
The DUZ formation defied all these odds and performed excellently right from the start. Their 2nd place at the end of the competition and special travel story even got them into the regional press. Hellings is now refining and optimising the "Queen" choreography - with the active support of Yulia Dreier and Volodymir Kasilov (DUZ) and Lucas Münster (Tanzquotient) - for the next national league tournaments, which will take place in Nuremberg, Munich and Wasserburg in March. There is a great appetite to gain further experience as a Swiss Latin formation.
Where there's a will, there's a way. Another saying that fits.
