Category: competitions

Okay, YouTube has sorted itself out.  Click through for videos.  Feel free to play “Spot the Technique Error.”

N.B.: I am uploading the videos from last weekend as we speak but getting “unknown errors” from YouTube.  Video links coming as soon as I can get them working.

Just finished watching a couple of heats’ worth of video of us from the Carolina Fall Classic last weekend.  Good news: we do not look as bad as I feared we might.  In particular, I do not look as lumpy and saggy in my JulioJulio dress as one unlucky still photo from Baton Rouge had led me to believe.  More good news: neither of our kamikaze-style Viennese Waltz attempts was captured on video.

Now for the bad news.  Looking at these videos, I can see why we didn’t get good marks.  Our routines are interesting, but our fundamentals aren’t good:

• Footwork is steppy and tentative instead of smooth and strong.
• Posture is bad–Daniel’s forehead is way up by my ear.
• Contact isn’t consistent in hold–in one shot you can clearly see daylight between our hip bones.
• Transitions in & out of hold are sloppy.
• I’m dancing into the floor rather than across it–my steps look stompy.
• We are not aggressive enough and therefore not covering floor as we should.
• Tango is too bouncy.
• Foxtrot is not bouncy enough.
• I was so glad we got the choreography right that I didn’t even notice rise & fall in waltz, which probably means it wasn’t there.
• Relatedly, we are failing to use our knees in any of the dances.
• We are clearly neither dancing our routines smoothly as written nor improvising believably.

Adequate practice–the one thing we haven’t had in the past–is the only cure.

Got video from Greenville uploaded a couple of nights ago; video from the Carlyle Place exhibition on August 9 is still waiting on permission from one of the participants.  Enjoy some views of us and our fellow dancers already fully dressed, made up, and competing before 10 a.m.  Competition days are loooooooooong sometimes!

We are back from the Greenville Newcomers Challenge, where we had an excellent time and danced a lot. No, seriously: A LOT.  See, pro-am competitions are different from all-amateur events in that there are a lot more categories and combinations of dances at a pro-am.  We have traveled to USA Dance comps and danced only a half-dozen times, but yesterday we danced about 58 heats, mostly single dances, all in one day.  It was a total marathon and by the end we were both exhausted.  Happy, but exhausted.  We started dancing at 8:30 a.m., got away for about 90 minutes for lunch, finagled a 4-hour break for an early dinner and a nap, and finished our last heat after 11 p.m.  The awards for the evening session took place at the end of the session so we were actually in the ballroom till close to 1 a.m.  We might not ever register for quite so many heats again, but the experience was worth it.  We won a $100 scholarship (always exciting) and we got to do some things we’d never done before:

• I had my picture taken with some sorority girls–members of Kappa Delta at Clemson University–who were attending a conference at the comp hotel and came in to watch the dancing.
• We scratched some heats: this is not, practically speaking, a big deal, but we’d never done it before.  Around 3 p.m. we realized that if we danced everything we were signed up for, we might not even have time to eat dinner.  So we asked the deck captain to scratch us from the rest of the afternoon and came back for the evening session in scholarship-worthy shape.  Good call.
• We each threw away a pair of dance shoes.  Daniel bought a new pair at the comp and started wearing them immediately.  I wore my old, grotty, too-tight Smooth shoes for the millionth time because I keep swearing I’ll get rid of them and then I don’t.  By the end of the night I was practically limping and threatening to throw them away before we left Greenville.  Daniel hid them from me for the rest of the night so I could think about it.  Just before we left the comp hotel, he said “Are you sure about your shoes?” and pointed to where he’d concealed them under the registration table.  I said yes and left them there.  Also a good call.
• Most interesting of all, we got to do what’s called a “dance-on.”  I’d seen this done at Hotlanta but it’s never done at amateur comps.  Instead of entering en masse through the on-deck area, each couple is introduced by name, enters through the curtain behind the podium, and then does a 30-second solo.  It’s not judged so it’s just a chance to show off in the spotlight (literally, in this case).  We were a little nervous because we’d never done one before and because we weren’t sure what music we’d get.  But we found out it would be a tango, so we went out there and did the first 30 sec. of our tango routine–which happens to be pretty good and pretty interesting to watch.  It was fun!

We definitely did not dance perfectly but we danced well at least some of the time and got a lot of compliments.  We were also glad that Eddie was there (he and the Academy Ballroom crew were running the comp) as he’d not seen us compete before.  I think it gave him a better idea of what we need to work on in lessons.  We have a lesson Friday and then I’m doing workshops at the studio all day Saturday.  I hope my blisters heal by then, but if not, I’ll just tape ’em up and go for it!

We set off for the Gumbo Dancesport Championships in 12 days.  It must be time to start obsessing about getting ready.  This will be our first time flying to a comp.  It’s gonna be a major troop movement.  We are dancing in some events where costumes are allowed, and some events where they aren’t, so I have to decide about taking my gowns and whether to check them or try to carry them onto what’s likely to be a wee little aircraft.  Last year I bought this practice dress for Smooth and I just got an outfit (this top and this skirt) for Rhythm, so I will be pretty well fixed without gowns too.  As a fan of packing light, I’m tempted not to take the gowns, but I don’t know yet.

At this point it’s much more fun to obsess about packing and preparations than to really focus on any possible shortcomings in our dancing.  As always, we haven’t practiced as much as we’d like or taken as many lessons as we’d hoped for, but we have our new routines and we are pretty good at selling a performance.  Plus, we are both really up for a vacation, so we want to make sure we enjoy this trip regardless of our placements.  Dressing up, pinning on the number, and putting on the show is half the fun.  Being in a new place will be the other half.

Not that a ribbon or two wouldn’t be nice.