Austin Joson
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| Born: | August 7, 1995 (age 11) Middlesex County, NJ, USA |
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| Occupation: | Ballroom dancer, Student |
| Website: | www.AustinJoson.com |
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[edit] About Austin
Born in New Jersey, Austin Joson is an 11 year-old ballroom dancer, and has won several National titles in the Preteen/Juvenile category. He is a ten dance competitor, which means that he competes in both Latin and Standard dances. In each category he has finished in first place countless amounts of times. He has been dancing for 2 years.
[edit] Early Period
He has had several partners throughout his ballroom dancing career, his first being Fiona Tsatskin. He and Fiona danced in Austin's first competition, the Tri-State Challenge in March of 2005. At this point he was dancing at the Bronze level. They went on to compete in the Philly Festival, American Star Ball, and Manhattan Dancesport competitions, with very successful results.
[edit] Beginning of Gold and partnership with Taylor-Ann Barton
After the 2005 Manhattan Dancesport Championship, Austin began a partnership with Taylor-Ann Barton of Alpine, Utah. They went on to compete at the Preteen Championship level in several competitions including the Ohio Star Ball and Embassy Ball. Austin, abruptly reaching a new level of dancing and competition, seemed to have entered a storm without a rain jacket. Austin and Taylor's partnership was very strong and quite promising, however, due to many other things they had to take care of, Taylor's family opted to take a break from dancing.
[edit] Liza Lakovitsky
With the sudden loss of a partner, Austin Joson had to audition a new partner. Through a ballroom dancing website, he found Liza Lakovistky, a fellow gold competitor from Brooklyn, New York. She is his current partner. Their biggest issue as a partnership has been said to be their height difference, but this seemed to be less of a problem for judges. Liza was not trained in Standard dancing prior to her partnership with Austin, but they quickly became Standard champions. Austin and Liza are 2006 USA Dancesport National Preteen Champions in both Latin and Standard. They represented the United States in the Juvenile Team Match at [Blackpool Festival] in Blackpool, England. Additionally, they have competed in numerous competitions across the United States including the Ohio Star Ball and Embassy Ball (both of which they are Latin and Standard champions) in the past year. Their most recent competition was the Classique du Quebec, held in Montreal, where they were juvenile champions in Standard and Latin once again.
[edit] Beyond Competitions
In addition to their vast acheivements in competitive ballroom dancing, they have appeared in numerous shows including Dance from the Heart-Dancers Responding to AIDS and America's Ballroom Challenge on PBS.
