On this page I will introduce you to my sport background
Introductory Paragraph
My sport activity began when I was 5 years old. My parents brought me to a figure skating. That was my first exposure to something, that brought artistic character into my life. I spent about a year in figure skating, after which I and my parents dediced to switch to International Latin Dancing. I was six years old at that time. Here is an old photo of me learning how to figure skate:
This is the time when my professional sport carreer has begun. On this page I will chronologicaly introduce you to my broad dancing career.
My first visit to a dance floor happened in September 2009. When my foot stepped on the dancing floor, I already knew my destination in this sport - to become a world champion.
As in any professional sport career, a strong team is the main key to success. First of all, I would like to express my sincere gratitude to my lovely parents, who become one of the most concrete supports for me during my professional carreer. In all my ups and downs that I experienced in my long and yet colourful carreer, my parents were the ones who supported me each single second of my life. I had a lot of coaches during my carrer, who I will be talking about in my biography here. However, my mother Natalia, and father Nikolai, were not just parents for me, they became my coaches, friends and my mentors. Thank you so much for supporting me that much in all my brightest and darkest moments of my sport carreer and life overall! Sincerely love you both.
Secondly, I would like to express a massive thanks to all my partners and coaches, who supported me all along the career.
Now, let's finally dive into my career.
My Sport Biography
Hey! And..., this is me, Nikolai and my partner - Alika Gugnina on this photo. This is was one of the most important world championship competetions of my life, called - Blackpool, England.
Let me tell you now how I got there!
Huh, it was quite a long way. It all started from my first day as I came on the dance floor, and when I met with my first coach - Dmitry Semenyuk, who taught me basics of International Latin Dancing. This person started building a fundamental base of my knowledge in this sport.
Here is a picture of my first coach, myself and my partner - Masha Markina, who I will be talking about a little bit later on this page.
Dmitry is one of those people I met along my sport career, who was contagious with the idea of dancing. He inspired and lighted the spirit of dancing inside my soul, which will never be extenguished! Dmitry became the one, who gave me an immensly strong initial momentum, which carried me throughout my entire career.
I was learning quite fast, and in about 3 months I was given a chance to collaborate with my first partner - Elena Yastrub.
With my first partner we danced our first competetion in 2010. This competetion was held in my origin town - Mykolaiv (Nikolaev). This was the first competetion experience that I got in my professional sport carreer.
I danced after many competetions with Elena locally in my town and neightbour towns - Odessa and Kherson. This first year of local, beginning level of dancing gave me a tremendous initial experience. This beginning competetive year with Elena shaped my young and eager dancing character towards the more greater level of dancing.
Thanks to Elena and my first coach Dmitry, I was introduced to how this sport requires immense amount of work and practicing. I spent with Elena about a year. We competed in a lot of competetions, and learned a lot from this experience.
Since this website is still currently being under construction, I am currently looking for old pictures with my first partner back to 2010. Be patient:).
After dancing with Elena for about a year as already mentioned till 2011, and getting some good results on competions, my next coaches became interested in my talent and desire.
The next year in this sport continued the development of my professional dancing career. In 2011 Dmitry introduced me to my next coaches - Vyacheslav Viktorovych and Lyudmila Aleksandrovna. These people can be seen on the photo below.
These coaches opened a new door for my professional career development. After dancing with Elena, I collaborated with a new partner - Masha Starostenko.
I danced with Masha Starostenko for about a year as well. In this time span my new coaches started raising a new level of dancing character in me. With Masha Starostenko we visited some competetions, two of which became to be the first rating tournaments, which started my history as a professional dancer.
And since May 2012, competing in Juvenile category, I kicked off my professional career in dancing on the professional level with my next partner - Maria Markina being supervised by the same coaches.
My career with Masha ended up being the most productive. We competed in 62 rating championships, spanning from championships of Europe to World Championships. I competed with my partner in Juvenile and Junior categories.
The first competetion that we competed in as a couple was in European Competetion in Kharkiv, Ukraine in 2012. We were placed 7th in the final out of 38 couples.
With the great support from our coaches and parents, we started rising super fast, and getting a lot of top places on championships.
That first year we also got a chance to perform in the first foreign championships called 'Imperial' and 'International', which were held in England.
In 2012, I and my partner won 7th place in the final of Juvenile 2 category on Ukrainian Championship. Here is a recorded video of an interview that was taken by my partner and me after the championship:
In 2013, our career had a massive spike. We won a lot of europian championships and were placed in top 10 of world championships.
One of the most brilliant moments of 2013 was the time when we won a world championship in France in Juvenile category. Here you can watch a video of me and my partner dancing during our final. As well as a video of an award ceremony and my interview video, where we were told live - that we are the world champions.
Having a title of the Wolrd Champion, we continued performing on a highly professional level in my origin country, France and England.
My coches Vyacheslav Viktorovych and Lyudmila Aleksandrovna became the people who rose the spirit of the champion in my dancing character. These two people dedicated all their time and desire to invest all their precious knowledge of the proper dancing technique and psychology. I am very much grateful to Vyacheslav and Lyudmila for creating a stone base of the champion spirit. This spirit will stay with me forever not only in dancing world, but beyond. Love you both.
Here you can find more photos of my career as juvenile.
In 2013 we performed in International Championship, where we got placed 4th place in Juvenile latin. Here you can find videos of me and my partner performing as well as a photo during the award ceremony
Having successfully finished the Juvenile category, we moved to Junior category dancing since 2014.
In 2014 we continued performing in numerous championships, winning top places. Below you can find videos and pictures from various championships during the 2014 performance.
2015 brought some challanges to my professional career and life overall. My lovely coaches Vyacheslav and Lyudmila had to migrate to another country. It was a tremendously hard time for me, as I did not know that they moved to another country forever. Each single practice day that I had on my dance floor, I was expecting to see them back. However, with the help of my parents, I accepted the fact that my coaches will never come back to me.
Having overcome the hard transition, dancing world was waiting for me back. My parents took a serious initiative to keep my spirit up and return me to the professional dancing.
I would like to express my sincere gratitude to Yuri Vasilievich and Yana Alexandrovna Vasyutyak, Dasha Maryushchenko and Anton Nesterko, who became my new coaches in the capital city of Ukraine - Kiev. These people took the initiative of supporting me morally, and continue teaching me professional level of dancing.
I cannot stress enough how thankful I am to these people who took care of me during this turning point. They contributed all their love, knowledge, time in order to support me and keep my level of dancing on world rank. They became my true dancing family!
2015 became my last year as a collaboration with my parner - Maria Markina. We finished this year with dignity and performed in many competetions, continuing winning top places.
Here are some videos of me and my partner competing in champioships in 2015
I would like to conclude this period of my dancing life with a huge thanks to my parents for their enourmous support and love.
In the beginning of 2016 year, I collaborated with a new partner - Valeriya Pronyuk. We participated for about a year in 6 rating championships .
Here are some videos and photos from 2016 championships with me and Valeriya.
For the year of 2016 - 2017 I had new coaches - Igor Katana. Thank you very much Igor for supporting and teaching me for this period of my professional dancing. Here is the picture of me, my partner Valeriya and my coach Igor:
Now we are coming closer to story of the first photo on this page, dedicated to the history of my sport career. For the period from November 2016 to the middle of 2017, I had a spike of the career again with my new partner - Alika Gugnina.
With my new partner from Odessa, I also met my new coach - Alexey Gotsulyak. I am very much grateful to Alika, Alexey and Igor for their constant support and dedication. Together as a team, we successfully performed in many competetions, continuing bringing the highest quality of dancing to the world of International Latin Dancing.
The first competetion that we performed in November, 2016, was held in Kiev. We won two first places in our debut competetion. Here are some photos and videos from our competetion:
The next competition was held next week also in Kiev, called "Kiev-Open". We won 4th place at this Ukrainian Championship. Here are some photos and videos from this competetion:
Next competetion was performed in France, December 2016, at the World Championship. We got into top 8 of couples.
The next competetion was held also in Kiev. I and my partner Alika performed in another ukrainian championship where we won 3rd place:
Starting from 2017, I and my partner visited many competetions in Kiev and my origin town - Mykolajiv:
Here is a video of me and my partner dancing in a competetion that was held in my neighbout town - Odessa:
Now, it is time to talk about that first photo that I showed in the beginning of my sport biography dedicated to the dancing career. After tremendous amount of work and many successful championships, I and my partner performed in the competetion called 'Blackpool'. It was my dream since the first time I found out about this championship, to visit and dance on that beautiful dancing floor. And the time had come to perform. This was perhaps the most peak of my dancing career from technical and emotional perspective.
We performed in many categories and took a lot of good places. Here are videos and photos from this competetion with my partner:
I would like to express my gratefulness to my partner Alika, my coaches Alexey, Igor, and my lovely parents for their support and the fantastic results that we achieved.
On 4th of June, 2017, I and Alika danced our last competetion as a couple. It happened so, that this was the last competetion that I danced in 2017, before my family decided to move to Canada.
However, I have never stopped dancing. Even though I do not compete in competetions in this current timeframe, I am keeping myself in a great shape.
At the time I moved to Canada (September, 2019) I was trying to find good coaches and partner in order to continue dancing on a professional level and compete in serious championships. In the introductory parapgraph of this page, I emphesized greatly on the importance of the team in this sport, and overall how important it is to have coaches and partner, who are eager to dance at a serious professional level. However, during 4 years of my living in Canada, I could not find that coach and partner who would raise a champion couple.
In this 4 year duration, I visited many coaches and clubs here, however, I have observed something here in Canada, what quite scared me. The environment in which I was raised back in my country was full of tremendous champion spirit, insane amount of encouragement, effort, support and hard work. All people who surrounded me in this sport back in my country were all contagious with the idea of dancing and could not live a single day without the dedication to this sport. This is what I did not see and feel from the dancing world here. Many people here treat International Latin Dancing as just a business idea, a way to earn money without any supreme purpose - raising champions. There is a few people here who treat this sport as a magnificent piece of art, and as a life itself, embracing and living every moment of it.
I am glad that I came from Ukraine, with the background of an unbreakable spirit raised by champions. I am hoping still that I will be able to find that coach and partner who will be interested in raising a champion couple that is capable of competing at a highly professional level.
Closing Remarks
My sport career is quite saturated with the amount of competetions, wins, ups and downs. Thanks to this sport, and my parents who brought me early to it, this gave me a chance to mature early as a kid in my life. Since my childhood, I was able to master multitasking. Balancing well my school and sport since my early ages, gave me a lot of experience and trained me well for my future life. With this sport, I understood that only with the immense, enourmous amount of work, dedication and insistance, any goal can be achieved. I got used to working hard on anything that I do in this life thanks to this sport and the mentality that I gained from people who trained me.
I am thankful to everyone from my coutry who invested their time and knowledge into my personal character. The champion spirit that I was taught will always stay with me, thanks to Vyacheslav Viktorovych and Lyudmila Aleksandrovna for setting such a base for me. Endless thanks to Yuri Vasilievich, Yana Alexandrovna Vasyutyak, Dasha Maryushchenko and Anton Nesterko for continuing teaching me and raising my dancing spirit. And of course thanks to Igor Katana and Alexey Gotsulyak for teaching and keeping me in a good shape. I would like to thank also all my partners, their parents, and unboubtedly, huge thanks to my parents who assist me during this whole life journey. Thank you mother and father for constantly supporting me in everything that I do! And, thanks to everyone who loves dancing the way I love it!
My sport career has not finished! All this momentum that I got from all these years is stored in me, and can be used anytime to continue doing the art that I love - dancing!
