Behind the camera and production of Social Dance TV is Kir Korshikov, videographer for Dance Festivals & Events who told us his story

Social Dance TV is a dance video production company founded in 2014 by Kirill Korshikov, based in Rostov-on-Don, Russia ano with presence all around the world. Their mission is to make the magic moment of dance dialogue part of the social dance community heritage by capturing the flow of partner dancing on video and sharing it worldwide through social media.

Social Dance TV is friendly and fully equipped video production team and social media for dance events. Dancing and dialogue through it between people all over the world is their passion. They travel to the most amazing dance events and share what they see with the rest of the world, rising the interest to what is happening where they are and making people going more and more to the dancefloor where they have been.

What they do?

Cover all the video tasks – filming the shows, social dancing, making the event’s after movie and production materials

Promote events on their channels – Facebook, Instagram and Youtube

Do promotional videos for dancers, events and live concerts

Do livestream during your events on Facebook and Instagram

Manage social media accounts

Make web design and motion graphics

Write the articles and small texts about the events for promotion

Manage your event because they know how to do it!

Behind the camera, but at the forefront of all this business is a passionate and tireless man who takes care of every detail and every piece of gear. There is nothing Kir Korshikov cannot achieve on Social Dance TV, but … Who is Kirill Korshikov?

Kirill Korshikov is an entrepreneur and videographer based in Rostov-on-Don, Russia. Is known for his work on Shine (2017), Street Dance 2 (2012) and for his project Social Dance TV which became famous among Latin dance community since 2015, this was the first online project that helps people and events to get together and unite the social dance fans all around the world. The innovative approach to the video filming of dances allowed us to see social dances more dynamic, thereby attracting more and more fans to the Latin American culture.

Born in Rostov-on-Don, Russia, Korshikov studied at the Taganrog Technological Institute of Southern Federal University and graduated in 2012. Kirill was one of the best graduate students of 2012. When Kirill was a student, in 2010 he organized a dance school in the University Student Club, which was popular among students and where dance events were held.

Which later became known as Baila Rico Dance Studio Technical education helped him to set up the finest tools in order to create uniquely video content. Nowadays Kirill goes for broadening the supply for dance event makers and widen the world Social Dance TV map (over 35 countries on it now) in order to make the dancing community strong, varied and united through the videos that he creates. Kirill was a videographer for several movies in Bollywood too.

Know the story behind Social Dance TV

Kirill Korshikov opened the doors of his project to us and told us in an incredible way, the history of Social Dance TV and how he came to form a community that admires him and has made him part of the Social Dance family.

In this story you will discover how an ordinary Instagram account became a world covering media for the whole wide community of social dancers. Also the story tells how it was made possible to gather tens of thousands of viewers on recent anti-corona-aid live airs. Now, more than ever, Social Dance TV’s feed captures sights of most dancers round the globe as the only way to keep connected during anti-COVID restrictions. These days together with millions of dancers I long for a fine party just for the whole world to see!

Through the last 20 years social dancing not only has changed by way of new fancy moves and styles as it always does, but evolved into a huge global community and cultural industry thanks to social media. Save for local parties, now a whole new world of dance festivals up to 10 000 people with its own icons, maps and mass media offers you best shows, parties till dawn, and a constant news feed. Social dance has become probably more of a life background than it has ever been.

Kir invites us to compare: in 2000, when “Salsa” cult movie came out, “salsa festival” format was in its founding. The biggest events gathered up to 1000 people. Now, after twenty years, around 15 events are held every weekend. Hosting over five thousand people is a tradition for Warsaw Salsa Festival and Croatian Summer Salsa Festival, as an example. And 10 000 people come to Euro Dance Festival in Germany. It’s hard to imagine a place where salsa and bachata festivals are somehow missed.

Back in 2014 social dancing issue representation in social media was rather disjoint: dance schools, festivals and dancers themselves charged their channels with diverse content to appeal to a wider audience based on their activity. So it was pretty hard to get some aggregated content wide and deep enough to explore any distinct topic. Oh, wait! It’s clear now, but then it was OK!

“While I was totally in that number of newsmakers I had some overlapping background. I had done a lot of filming for many years by then, I took part in shooting several dance movies and made tons of wedding videos and all that, so I had an eye for fine things to shoot. Plus, I am a dancer since the age of 4, so it made no trouble for me to fit the social dance community and to know a good dancer from a bad one.”

And the brighter idea that came to Kirill was to create an Instagram channel with just dancing videos in order to unite visuals like himself, who could spend hours consuming that kind of content. Also it seemed convenient to have one link to send to people who constantly ask “what’s that social dancing you keep talking about?” Thus, on Jan. 13 2015 the Social Dance TV channel was started. In the beginning he aired stirring dancing videos from different sources and of course he started to make his own videos, intending to show the dancers to themselves in the way he could do that, in the way he see them.

“In a half a year it came clear that that my videos had way more engagement, so SDTV became an author’s channel.”

And it also came clear that all dancers needed dance videos as a detached easy-access root of their dance web inquiry. Virally, SDTV became a mandatory part of the subscription of every self-respected social dance community member.

“I mean it, I realized that my Instagram channel actually brought the vast majority of dancers together and I felt how huge it was. When you realize something is huge, don’t deny it. So, I quit filming weddings (for it was too few fine dancing there), widened my channel on YouTube and Facebook and started to work full-time as a social dance event videographer, as SDTV occurred to be a perfect platform for festivals’ post production release.”

And it became a fine platform for dancers’ communication thanks to button “show translation”, leaving dance as the main language of the messages.

When Kirill is on the party, he originally think of himself as a dancer, he feel himself a part of the flow. He do what everybody else does, dance and watch. The only difference is he watch through the camera.

 “Watching people dancing is, in my opinion, the best way to observe people. Those who have eyes must see how sincere even the showiest move is. And a couple dance is the most exciting way for people to communicate, being so in-the-moment, so to-each-other and to-the-music, I’m never tired to watch. At last, the most thrilling experience to me is to capture that wonder into a box to show to those who missed it, to make them see what I’ve seen.”

By now SDTV has grown into a production studio with recruited staff to shoot more, to post faster and to film concomitant events. They film up to 50 festivals every year all over the world. They’ve been to 36 countries. Their capacities allow them to support dancers and organizers who work in the dance industry full-time, which is more professional and more uncertain. They promote online classes, do live airs, volunteer for a charity, make trends, and they can confidently name themselves mass media.

“It would be sly to say I never thought it would be this way, but even now it’s sometimes hard to realize how a video dance channel can affect lives of hundreds of thousands of people.”

The issue of the day makes them try harder: in March they shoot a charity festival, all funds of which were donated to COVID relief, they made several on-line classes with famous dancers to gather donations to medical centers.

“Dancers can be surprisingly compassionate, when they’re left with nothing but TV. Social Dance TV.”

Their goals for the future are to keep aggregating a still rather disjoint massive of social dancing content in the Internet, to shoot even more, to post even faster in order to widen the world Social Dance TV map. And by broadening the supply for dance event makers their aim to enhance the dancing community as a beautiful, strong, varied and united world that we live in through videos that they create.

So, that’s a brief story of how Kir’s passionate startup became a full-time job as a mass media holder.

Social Dance TV have deep roots in the social dance community so they know how to present the dance in a most attractive way and remind everybody how thrilling it is to watch everything with their own eyes.

They help people and events to get together, help the dancers to make their dances to be seen, help the dance world to be united and open minded to every dance style they have.

Magical moments of events be captured and saved forever by them. Everybody around the world see those brilliant moments of dance. Social Dance TV and Kirill Korshikov contribute to make the Social Dance more and more popular… They do what they love.

Follow Social Dance TV on Instagram, Facebook and YouTube! This community covers more than 600 thousand people with a common passion: Social Dance