JULY 16-20
BIRMINGHAM, ENGLAND
2025 FINALS
WHY GDO?
INDEPENDENT ORGANISATION
Global Dance Open is a family-run business founded by Vanessa, Nicola & Annika Thomas. Although all have dance backgrounds, there is no connection to any dance school worldwide. All directors refrain from any choreography or teaching work globally, to ensure complete independence in the dance community.
GLOBAL EXPOSURE
Through GDO, we enable dancers, choreographers and studios to be recognized for their hard work, dedication and talent. Through our qualifier and final platforms, dancers can perform on some of the world’s best stages gaining valuable stage time, choreographers are able to showcase their creative work via their students and studios can showcase the hard work and training they are imparting with their students. Our finals are live streamed for free, enabling everyone to be exposed to a worldwide audience.
ESTEEMED & SPECIALIZED JUDGING PANEL
At GDO, great care and research is undertaken when selecting our jury panel. Through our connections with top institutions, performers, choreographers and teachers globally, GDO can work with leading professionals to provide the highest calibre of judging.
At qualifiers, all participants are provided with written feedback to help improve dancers moving forward to the finals and help with overall development. Judging panels are selected to represent the styles of dance present at the qualifier, ensuring that dancers are correctly adjudicated. We provide honest evaluation that dancers can use to establish their standing in the dance world.
At the finals, GDO welcomes a judging panel over 30 judges over the 5 days of competition, ensuring a full panel of specialist’s judges for every style of dance. Finals jury panel is composed of Artistic Directors and Directors of the globe’s leading dance institutions.
WARM, ENCOURAGING & SUPPORTIVE ATMOSPHERE
Global Dance Open take such pride in the atmosphere created across all events. GDO believes in taking away the importance from winning, and rather focus on learning. GDO believes that all events provide valuable opportunities: to connect and make new friends, to learn via our workshops, to have stage exposure and experience the feelings of being part of a team.
LIFE CHANGING SCHOLARSHIPS & AWARDS
Global Dance Open is proud to be one of the few competitions on the globe to offer such a diverse range of scholarships to leading institutions around the globe. Since its creation in 2020, GDO has awarded over 1.5 million euros worth of scholarships. These range from training opportunities across the UK, USA & Europe for summer schools, short courses, full-time vocational training and BA Hons Degrees. These opportunities have provided dancers with experiences and opportunities they may not have been exposed to and to also help with the financial pressures of further training.
INNOVATIVE OPPORTUNITIES
Global Dance Open strives to be an industry leader in providing young dancers with new and exciting opportunities. Since 2023, GDO has introduced Dancer of the Globe and Global Grand Prix, initiatives that have provided the top soloists with opportunities to be scouted, assessed and rewarded. Concepts such as the Grand Desfile and a Video shoot, which enabled the Dancer of the Globe dancers to work with professional choreographers & videographers and experience professional rehearsals. GDO continues to expand these initiatives every year.