Hanna Karttunen

Hanna Karttunen is a Finnish dancer who built a career across competitive ballroom, theatrical exhibition and television performance, bringing elite DanceSport technique into multiple public arenas. Born in Oulu, Finland, she studied ballet as a child before concentrating on Latin dancing, with formative competitive partnerships including work with Jaakko Toivonen, Sandro Cavallini, Geir Bakke and Rick Valenzuela.

Karttunen's most documented competitive phase came through her partnership with British Latin dancer Paul Killick. Between 2000 and 2003, they won the British National Professional Latin championship four consecutive times—2000, 2001, 2002 and 2003. The partnership also competed across major international circuits including the UK Open, International, Dutch Open, US Open and Asian Open.

In 2004, Karttunen entered television as one of the professional dancers in the inaugural series of the BBC programme *Strictly Come Dancing*, partnered with actor Christopher Parker. The pair reached the final and finished as runners-up, introducing her to an audience far beyond the DanceSport world. That same year, she began a performance partnership with Victor da Silva that shifted her focus toward exhibition and theatre-arts work. A BBC Studios performance documents their showdance collaboration, in which Latin-derived body action expands through lifts, balances and theatrical partnering.

Karttunen briefly returned to the professional Latin floor with Slavik Kryklyvyy around 2009, placing sixth at the UK Open while representing Finland. She resumed her work with da Silva afterward. Her later career centered on transmission and teaching. The 2019 World Ballroom Dancing Congress in Blackpool listed Victor da Silva and Hanna Karttunen as lecturers, documenting her role in passing performance knowledge to other dancers. Her current public work encompasses Latin dance, theatre arts and teaching.