It has been a tumultuous year in Latin dancing as the five GrandSlam Series competitions reflected perfectly. When the series began with the first leg in Helsinki, everybody was eager to see the three "new" couples formed after two high-profile partnerships were dissolved at the end of the previous year. Even the skeptics seemed to like what they saw. By winning Helsinki with his new partner Vera Bondareva, Nino Langella seemed all set to continue where he had left off five months earlier. It came all the more as a surprise when the two Italian dancers didn't make it to Wuhan, China, and later when Nino announced that he would leave the GrandSlam Series. But by then, three couples had started to position themselves as the heirs apparent to his dominance. Moldovans Gabriele Goffredo and Anna Matus had two back-to-back victories in Asia, but Armen Tsaturyan and Svetlana Gudyno of Russia came back fighting and took the next two legs in Moscow and Stuttgart. Nino's former partner Khrystyna Moshenska and Marius-Andrei Balan were runners-up twice but then surprisingly failed to qualify for the season-ending GrandSlam Final. The stage was set for the "Showdown in Shanghai" to determine which couple would succeed the long-time champions from Italy.
