Claire Hansen

Claire Hansen was born on April 25, 1984 in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. At the age of 5, she moved to the small town of Leamington (about 350km south of Toronto) and her family has been there ever since.

Claire started dancing at the age of four. She took Scottish Highland Dancing with Anne Sutherland in London, Ontario. Between the ages of 5 and 11, she traveled and competed at many games and competitions in Canada, the U.S. and even Scotland. By the age of 9, she was already competing at the Open level in her age category.

When Claire was 11 years-old, she saw the movie, Strictly Ballroom, and became interested in this sport. To her delight, her mother saw an advertisement a month later in a local newspaper for a Ballroom Dancing Competition in Windsor, Ontario, organized by Mike Angilieri. She went to the competition, fell in love with the dancing, and started taking lessons.

Her first dance partner was her teacher Mark Brock with whom she competed in Pro-am in many American competitions. At age 13, she danced bronze and silver with Julius Sagath from Toronto. Finding partners always proved difficult because Leamington was not located near any dancers and in addition, Claire was tall for her age. At age 15, Claire had a successful year with Veli Veliov from Windsor. They won the Adult gold standard and pre-champ latin at the Canadian National Championships.

At the age of 16, Claire took a big step when she moved to Europe to keep learning. She start competing on an international level. She continued and finished her High School OAC by correspondance, still maintaining an A average. Her first dance partner in Europe was Maxime Dereymez from France. By the end of that year, Claire and Maxime were ranked 2nd in France and they qualified for the Adult Standard World Championships. They also placed 19th in the under 21 modern category in Blackpool.

When this partnership dissolved, Craig Shaw from England contacted her. They began their dance partnership in October, 2001. For the first year of their partnership they lived in Southport, Craig's hometown, and commuted to London for lessons. For the last six months of their partnership, they moved to London to have more consistent training. This partnership was a huge learning curve for both Craig and Claire. In October of 2002, they made the International Under 21 Standard Final. In 2003, they made the Under 21 Standard final at the British Open in Blackpool and were ranked 5th in the Adult Standard Division in all of Britain. This partnership ended in May of 2003.

Not long after returning to Canada, an Australian friend (Richard Tonizzo), contacted Claire for a tryout. His partner had decided to go back to University full time. A tryout was arranged in August, 2003. Richard and Claire haven't looked back since.