Louis Van Amstel

Louis Van Amstel (born June 23, 1972, Amsterdam) is a Dutch-born ballroom dance champion, professional dancer, choreographer, and a dancesport coach who appears on the U.S. reality television series Dancing with the Stars.

Early life

Van Amstel was born in Amsterdam; his grandparents were competitive ballroom dancers. He began dancing at 10 and entered competitions at 15. He stopped attending school at 16 to pursue dancing full-time.

Career

Early career

During the summer of 1989, Van Amstel partnered with British dancer Julie Fryer, and they won several competitions over the next several years. He won three world Latin Dance championship gold medals in 1994, 1995 and 1996, becoming a 7-time Dutch and 3-time world champion. He moved to New York in 1991 and after he stopped competing, at age 26, began coaching dancers such as Tony Dovolani, Karina Smirnoff, and Maksim Chmerkovskiy. He also founded a dance company, VanDance. He became an American citizen in July 1999 and started competing with Karina Smirnoff; they won the United States national championship in 2000.

Dancing with the Stars

Van Amstel was cast for cast for season 1 of Dancing with the Stars in early 2005, together with his pupils Jonathan Roberts, Anna Trebunskaya, Alec Mazo, Edyta Sliwinska, Maksim Chmerkovskiy, and Elena Grinenko. For the first season, Van Amstel was partnered...
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