European Tournament for Dancing Students
Although each ETDS is organised by a different party, the structure remains fairly constant: on Friday evening, the blind date program takes place, in which dancers without a partner can try to find someone with which to compete in one or both dance disciplines.
In autumn 2015, the ETDS took place in Czech Republic, breaking that series for the first time.
Although the primary focus of the ETDS lies in organising a tournament of high standards, the event equally aims at creating a social happening where dancers from all of Europe can meet each other.
The ETDS was founded by the university dance teams of Clausthal, Braunschweig and Kiel, who agreed to get to know each other during a tournament.
Berlin won the dance mouse during this Sinterklaas tournament, and promised to organise the event somewhere in the future.
The University of Berlin fulfilled their promise in 1993 by taking care of the organisation of the tournament.
During autumn of 1994, the number of participants had increased to such a high amount that problems started to arise between the organisation and the administration of Kiel.
The number of participants continued to grow, and around 2004 a third class, "masters", was added to the breitensport section.
More than 500 participants took part in the 41st tournament in Groningen in May 2009, and another breitensport class by the name of “champions” was introduced.
The event continued to grow in popularity, and 570 participants were competing in the 47th edition during Pentecost, May 2012.
Nevertheless, several rules exist during each tournament: Dancers can sign up for two disciplines, standard and Latin-American.
In the breitensport class, only untrained and low level training dancers are allowed.
In the breitensport section, a pre-qualification round takes place, where each participating couple is classified into the amateur, professional ("profi"), master or the optional champion class, so that each couple will dance the subsequent actual tournament in a class that matches their levels.
The adjudicators are chosen from volunteers of the participating universities that do not compete themselves in the discipline in which they judge.
Blind dating is mandatory in the CloseD and open classes (in the latter case sometimes being replaced by composing couples by the lot or by other rules), and stimulated in the breitensport by a blind date programme on Friday and Saturday for the following day's tournament.
During the breitensport tournaments, a blind date couple can score more points for a university, and thereby improve their team's chance of winning the tanzmaus prize.
