Genoa 2023: Helena Kasicka eyeing to inspire at World Championships

The spotlight shines on Slovakia’s Helena Kasicka as she glides around the huge dance floor. Her expressive, creative and elegant movements have captivated yet another panel of judges.

“It is about telling a tale when you are consumed by the music, and you manage to express what you want. Nothing can compare,” says the six-time world champion, to describe how she feels when she dances.

Kasicka is preparing to compete at the 2023 Para Dance Sport World Championships in Genoa, Italy, which starts on Friday (24 November). 

She is the defending champion from the Bonn 2019 edition in the women’s class 1 single freestyle, combi freestyle, and combi Latin, which includes samba, cha-cha-cha, rumba, paso doble, and jive.

“I will be excited if I finish well. I am going to Genoa with great humility, but I have my ambitions,” says Kasicka, who choreographs her freestyle single dances, which can include anything from hip-hop to street dance, along with ballroom and Latin dances.

“The choreography and choosing the music are difficult processes whether it is Latin or ballroom, but freestyle is particularly complicated,” she explains.

In 2006, she met her first dance partner, Peter Vidasic, at a dance camp in the capital Bratislava. Kasicka was a 20-year-old college student and looking for a sport to take up.

She was born with a genetic disease where her bones are easily broken. “I don’t think it influences my life that much, but, obviously, I won’t go bungee jumping, although that isn’t a tragedy,” she explains. “I have to be more alert when it comes to falls, sudden movements and impacts. I worry a bit about it but, despite that, it isn’t limiting.”

No to tennis, yes to dance

After rejecting wheelchair tennis, she turned to Para dance sport.

“As a child I started dancing at school. I used to tell myself that I would either become a doctor or a ballerina. Then when I was an adult, I was asked if I wanted to try dancing and I went to a dance camp and met Peter.

“At first, I didn’t consider it a sport, only an activity where I could go to have fun and dance. I started taking it more seriously when I had my first accomplishments and when Peter taught me how to approach dance and all that dance entailed.

“I was lucky because Peter is a really good dancer and coach who taught me a great deal. He is the secret to my success, along with my other coaches and dance partners, as well as training hard, wanting to train, and changing my lifestyle and mindset.

“At the time, Para dance was unheard of; we were pioneers in Slovakia. It was considered something charitable, for performances and the like, but now everyone sees that it’s actually a lot of hard work.”

Just two years later, Kasicka and Vidasic were in the national squad and won silver in mixed combi Latin class 1 and bronze in mixed combi standard class 1 at the 2008 World Championships in Minsk, Belarus.

Five years later, they topped the podium in the mixed combi standard class 1 at the World Championships in Tokyo. “It was an indescribable feeling of pride, happiness and joy.”

Although she admits it was not her initial reaction due to a translation mix-up: “I started to cry because I thought we had finished in sixth place. Peter began laughing, and then he hugged me and told me we had won, and that I should finally learn English. It was a comical situation.” 

Kasicka has since won a haul of titles and medals in single events. The 37-year-old has had several dance partners since Vidasic retired in 2016, but she still regards him as the most supportive and influential person in her life and career. Since May this year, she competes with Martin Solc.

“Training every day has been gruelling”, she says, but it has paid off.

At their most recent outing, the Prague 2023 Para Dance Sport International Competition in October, they won two gold medals in combi Latin and combi freestyle. The Slovakian also won the women’s single freestyle class 1.

Home success

But her success a month earlier was particularly special. Kasicka was back in Košice, where she won three golds to put Slovakia at the top of the medal table at the 2023 Para Dance Sport World Cup.

She triumphed in the women’s single conventional class 1 before collecting two more crowns with Solc in combi Latin and combi standard. 

“Dancing at home is the best,” she says. “They [family and friends] haven’t seen you the entire year and then you come home to dance, and they see what you have been doing when you couldn’t meet them, or had to cancel get-togethers, and so on.”

The multiple world champion was born in a small town, Spisska Nova Ves, and grew up with her parents, brother and younger sister. As a child, she was sent to a school for physically disabled children in Kosice, about 100kms away, as there were no integrated schools nearby. 

“I liked school and once there I found out what it truly means to have friends and live a normal life, but with other disabled kids. They didn’t discriminate there, but I was without my parents, which later wasn’t a problem for me. I was there until the end of middle school.” After graduating in social work at college, she became an accountant in Kosice. Her work also includes human resources.

But outside of school, life was different. “I went to the playground with my father, and everyone left. Only later did I realise that they had left because I was in a wheelchair. 

“When I finished school and went job hunting, a lot of people and employers told me that healthy people did not have work, so they asked me what I was doing there.

“But it has definitely changed, albeit slowly. Compared to the nineties, when as kids we would go inside a shop and get nothing but strange looks, now people try to help you.”

Even so, she added: “We disabled people can’t expect that [able-bodied] people to be the only ones making a change; we should also change our mindset and accept that not everything can be adapted to us.”

In her limited spare time, Kasicka enjoys reading books, cleaning, listening to music, the theatre, and walks with her dog in the sun. “I don’t like winter, except for Christmas,” she reveals, which is just a month away.

Ready for Genoa

Before that, she will be competing in five events in Genoa, namely, single, single freestyle, and with Solc in combi Latin, standard and freestyle. 

As a role model and an ambassador for Para dance sport, she encourages other persons with disabilities to try it, or sport in general: “Sport is a great tool for people with disabilities whether it be physical or for your mind. Everybody should try it.”

To illustrate the benefits, she describes how dance makes her feel and the impact it has had on her life: “Dance for me is something beautiful but also hard. You can relax, tell a story, and be whoever you want to be, like a beautiful princess, or a butterfly, or something evil, or very much in love, or arrogant. 

“You can be in different places, too, like at a carnival in Rio. Dance allows you to do all of these things: to show what is inside your head as well as show off the music and your body to everyone around you. Dance can fulfil the dreams inside your head.

“It has also given me self-realisation, the feeling of success, new friends, living a normal life as a healthy person, and the fact that when I am old, I will have something to remember and maybe I will be able to pass the torch on to someone.”

A total of 160 athletes from five continents are due to compete at the Genoa 2023 Para Dance Sport World Championships. The event will be livestreamed on the World Para Dance Sport website. 

You can follow all the action and go behind the scenes on the World Para Dance Sport social media channels on Facebook, Instagram and X.