Today we’d like to introduce you to Sondre Olsen-Bye and Tanya Georgiievska .
Hi Sondre and Tanya, we’re thrilled to have a chance to learn your story today. So, before we get into specifics, maybe you can briefly walk us through how you got to where you are today?
I (Tanya) will be writing in the first person because it is strange to say “Them” when it is Us.
Our story began long before we even met. Nowadays people tend to blend us into one organism – Sondre&Tanya. However, this wasn’t the case before 2015 or even 2016.
We both went to dancing in the early years. I started with classical ballet at the age of 4 in Kiev, due to this crazy 90’s fashion to send all girls to dance classics. Sondre went for the Norwegian Swing at the age of 6. It was his father’s dream to make him a dance champion.
Even though I was always told by my father that dancing isn’t a profession (sport is crucial, but it must stay a hobby) I kept on practicing, competing, and even giving a few classes here and there. In Ukraine dancing is just a hobby by default unless you are some sort of prima ballerina in the Opera Theatre. Sondre went fully for dancing encouraged by his father to travel, take classes and compete. In Norway it works a little differently – you can be something in ANY kind of profession and the boundaries between what is high-class and low-class profession are much blurrier than in the Eastern Europe. If you have high proficiency in anything, you are a high-class!
2000s are unofficially considered as the modern golden era of boogie-woogie competitions. In 2000-2010 many awesome dancers were “produced” (many are still on!) and we both were a part of this process. Dancing with different partners, Sondre and I (separately at that time) got much inspiration from the scene. Sondre was let alone to travel to other countries to learn already at the age of 15.
I was dancing all the way until 2010 when I got married and got a kid.
In 2010 when I was about to give birth to my son thinking that now it is time to be a full-time mom and life will never be the same again…, one of the best Ukrainian boogie woogie dancers moved to Kiev and knocked my door. I asked him to wait a few months, so I could give birth and start practicing again, it felt like my dream was coming true! I wanted to compete in boogie-woogie (I had a break from boogie-woogie for about 3 years)!
So that is how I restarted my boogie-woogie “career”. I gave birth and went for competitions with my new Ukrainian partner.
At that time Sondre was competing internationally for Norway.
In 2011-2014 we both competed for our countries and got titles. Sondre got two World Champion titles in Juniors and I got 4 World Cup wins with my partner.
As the scene is relatively small and friendly, we got to meet many times during different competitions. It was nothing more than just a “hello”
In 2013 while taking part at the same event in Sweden we won a local contest together (a Fast Feet contest, where participants coupled up in a random order) It was BIG at that time and it was our first achievement together.
In 2014 My family and I took a decision to leave Ukraine. Pretty sure that you know all of the stuff happening to Ukraine since the end of 2013 🙂 It made me stop dancing with my Ukrainian partner and, to be honest, I was about to quit boogie-woogie completely. My plans never work as I plan them :D, so when Sondre wrote to me asking to assist him in teaching in France I agreed immediately! It turned out that our common friend from Austria “arranged” our contact. She knew I was moving out of Ukraine and that Sondre was searching for a new partner at the time.
SO HERE STARTS OUR STORY
In July of 2015 we met in Berlin, where I managed to establish myself for half a year. We practiced for 2 weeks preparing a small show and bunch of classes for the upcoming festival in France.
The next time we met was in France and it was such a success that we got invited to teach and perform in Canada and Rock that Swing Festival in Germany. It felt like people just loved our new combination. Organisers of different swing dance events called us from all over the Europe inviting to teach and perform. We heard many people saying that they are happy we became a dance couple! That gave us so much inspiration, you can’t imagine.
Even though we never planned competing, we still decided to take part in one local Norwegian competition in September 2015. Since then, we had been competing as crazy entering all international finals and winning tons of world cups. During the next 3 years (2016-2019) we got Champions titles of Europe, World, Nordics, and Norway at least two times. Our dedication also made us invited to most of the European dance festivals connected to swing dancing for teaching and performing. We felt almost like it wasn’t real! In just 3 years we got from “let’s try one gig together” to “The Sondre & Tanya.”
Of course, we worked hard through these years: practicing 5 times a week two hours each time, stretching, working out, risking by learning new tricks. We also got to develop and create our own dance teaching programs combining techniques and fun, analyzing human anatomy, possible injuries, age groups, etc., etc. Dancing suddenly has become our full-time jobs and who would ever guessed that it was embracing so many aspects of life, from psychology to mechanics… Even after learning and discovering so much we still feel like being in the very beginning of the mountain.
At some point, it has become a constant rush. In 2019 each weekend was busy with either competition or a gig, we started burning out. I got problems in my family which led to divorce in 2020 (dancing wasn’t the main reason, but it wasn’t helping to be away from home all the time).
When we were on the edge of burning out, the pandemics came, bringing all of its pros and cons: we got locked down. To be very honest, first few months felt like a resort! No diets, no rush, no training or traveling. We both could just sit and rest. We didn’t even want to move a finger. Somehow it felt amazing. Since no one of our families got sick, it didn’t feel like a real danger and we calmly sat home chilling and relaxing.
After a month of sitting on the couch we got a few requests to make online classes. The guys asking were the ones from the dance scene. Sondre wasn’t very excited to make a full program of online classes, because we saw that EVERYONE was doing it already. Many swing dance teachers released their classes and promoted on Facebook. Anyway, he agreed to make a few lessons. When we announced the launch, the classes were sold so well that we decided to make my old dream come true – to make a full set of courses! We spent almost all April 2020 to create, record, and release our courses. Since then, we sold more than 500 courses, even though there was no specific advertisement about them,
YouTube wasn’t even in question as a business model, because we are quite old-fashioned people 🙂 Social dancing has to be SOCIAL in a very classic meaning of a human contact haha. But somehow the world has changed, so now it is all about likes and subs online.
Out of pure interest we started posting tons of gigabytes of dance material online! Competitions, parties, shows, etc. Finally, our stored videos got out into the wide public. When the amount of subscribers started growing, we realized that our passion to dancing is finding its supporters. At the same time, online classes were fully covering our living in Warsaw. It felt safe to dedicate some time to study a bit more about YouTube.
And here we are! Two years of pandemics have turned us from “normal” dance artists into the dance vloggers. We are still developing the dance itself and all things connected to it, but The Great Online, as we call it 🙂 is taking as much time and as much energy as every other type of job 🙂
Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall, and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
The biggest challenge is our different backgrounds and mentalities as well as the age, family status, and global vision of life 🙂 So… It is really hard to figure out one or two specific problems or obstacles. There were (and are) tons of situations and challenges arising from the things I mentioned above.
One is clear if you are working on yourself and want something, everything is possible.
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
We are specializing in swing dancing, boogie-woogie in particular.
We are proud of staying together for the whole 6 years of partnership and overcoming many challenges on our coupleship’s way. All titles, results, and success is just a boost to keep on working. The real reward is that enormous personal growth we have gained (and are still gaining) while walking shoulder to shoulder through different life situations.
We are proud of the ability to adapt to the fast-changing world and to grow with it
We see the world and life as a wholesome process. We learn and study those processes applying them in our arts. We allow ourselves to dream big, yet remembering about the present “here and now.” We also take it all with a big sense of humour. All this is making our activities meaningful and light at the same time
So maybe we end on discussing what matters most to you and why?
What matters to us is to see the goal ahead and to have some bigger dream to strive for. It gives energy and pleasure to wake up every morning
Contact Info:
- Email: sondreandtanya@gmail.com
- Website: sondreandtanya.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sondretanya/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/sondreandtanya
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/SondreOlsenByeTanyaGeorgiievska
- Other: sondreandtanya.thinkific.com
