Raymond Sarlemijn, was born on the 31 of august 1971 In Amsterdam.
In his younger years he was dancing hip hop, street dance, electric boogie, Latin dance and ballroom dance. He started line dancing at a local club in Amsterdam, but soon he saw Roy Verdonk dancing on television and joint Roy at his club.
Soon after this, Raymond grew to become a overall performer and joined Roy and Tom Mickers in their theatre show ( The devil went to Georgia). For a couple of years Raymond also was dancing in the Country Dynamics group who travelled around Europe for shows and workshops.
He created his own style by mixing his Latin dancing and street dancing into line dance, he was one of the first who was dancing more than only the feet, he was dancing with the body.
This gave him the nickname: The Latin Man.
Raymond started to write some shows for the Country Dynamics and choreographies with Roy and Darren Bailey.
Some dances they wrote together are: Love is in the air, Missing you, Push up, Love bug, Blame it on the boogie, Billy Jean, Mala Mujer, Radar love and many more.
All this got him up to the highest level in competition dancing the Superstar division.
Raymond is the oldest male Superstar in the world. Raymond is European Champion, Benelux Champion, Norwegian Champion, Swiss Champion, Swedish Champion, Belgium Champion, German Champion, Dutch Champion, France Champion in many different divisions, he is also 18 times World Champion, from those 18 times it is 15 times in the choreography division.
He is the only one who won 3 World titles at 1 World Championship in the category choreography and he did this twice. Raymond was called out in 2004 and in 2006 at the Dutch line dance awards (who is been held only once in the 2 years) as the best Dutch choreographer.
At the World Championship in 2005 in Sweden, Raymond was Chosen as the peoples favourite choreographer.
Raymond is travelling around Europe to teach, judge and show his dances and to share his passion for dancing with other people.
Raymond Sarlemijn has choreographed 345 dances, of which 254 have been co-choreographed. Their first published stepsheet on CopperKnob is La Cumbia from October 2007, with their most recent stepsheet of Better Together in November 2024.
Additionally, Raymond Sarlemijn had a CopperKnob no.1 dance in July 2024 with Roots, and has recently had 11 other dances in the top 10.
