History
The ETDS was founded by the university of Clausthal, Braunschweig and Kiel: they agreed to get to know each other during a tournament, and these three German universities organised the event a number of times. There was not a regular structure, but the tournament was organised ad-hoc. Finding a sleeping accommodation was easy, as the number of participants was still very low.
In November 1990, the tournament price was introduced that has been used since: “der tanzmaus” (German for “the dance mouse”), a pluche mouse. The tanzmaus was a donation of the university of Kiel and Clausthal was the first university to win the mouse.
In December 1991, a tournament during Sinterklaas took place. The tournament gained more participants and Berlin started participating as well. Berlin won the dance mouse during this Sinterklaas tournament, and promised to organise the event somewhere in the future. During this tournament, only one class existed.
In April 1992, the tournament took place in Clausthal. This was the first tournament where Dortmund started participating. Some tournaments later, Ulm and Marburg started participating as well.
The University of Berlin fulfilled their promise in 1993 by taking care of the organisation of the tournament. The tournament still did not have separate classes.
The next tournament took place in the spring of 1994, and the tournament gained in popularity; fifteen universities from Germany participated. Also, for the first time, universities from the Netherlands started to participate. The new universities were from Mainz, Geisenheim, Kaiserslautern, Delft and Eindhoven.
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 government of Kiel. The result was that Kiel was disallowed to organise the event for five years.
The next tournament was in the spring of 1995, and for the first time, the tournament was separated into two classes. They were called “amateurs” and “profis”. Leipzig also joined this tournament.
The tournament that was held in the summer of 1995 was the first event to take place in the Netherlands. The organisation was in the hands of ESDV Footloose from Eindhoven. Groningen joined during this tournament. From now on, the ETDS was no longer organised on an ad-hoc basis, but was organised regularly twice each year, during Pentecost and in the autumn, each time by a different university.
The number of participants continued to grow, and around 2004 a third class was added to the breitensport. People were now qualified in either the highest class called “masters”, or in the classes “profis” or “amateurs”. 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 continues to grow in popularity, and 570 participants were competing in the 47th edition during Pentecost, May 2012. Until now, the ETDS has taken place 47 times. The next tournament, the 48th ETDS, will take place in Oktober 2012 and will be organised by the Dutch city of Nijmegen. The 49th ETDS is for the first time scheduled to be organised by neither a German nor Dutch team, as it is scheduled to be organized by a team from Trondheim during Pentecost 2013.
Read more about this topic: European Tournament For Dancing Students
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