Dimitri Petrides (August 1912 in Cyprus – 1985 in Blackpool) was a ballroom dancer who was instrumental in pioneering and developing Latin American dancing in England and later globally. He left Cyprus when he was eighteen with his mother after the death of his father, eventually settling in England. He was one of the founding members of the Latin-American Faculty of the Imperial Society of Teachers of Dancing, and wrote the first English textbook on the subject ('The Latin American Technique' (1949)). He was a Fellow and Examiner of the ISTD.
Petrides was also an adept linguist speaking Greek, English, French and Italian, so much so that, during World War II he worked as a translator in a prisoner of war camp for Italian prisoners of war and was approached to work as a spy. Later, after the war, Dimitri was in a jewellery shop buying awards for a competition when he met Nina Hunt. She asked him to teach her to dance and together they became adominant force in the Latin American dance world. They were later married, and had a son, Ian.