Category: competitions

[Will “Soviet Russia” in post title attract Russian spambots? We’ll see.]

We returned Sunday night from the High Point Classic Dancesport Championships. There are no pictures from this competition, for good reason: we danced very badly! Out of 6 events entered we placed in only one. Sigh.

As Daniel and I discussed on the way home yesterday, everyone is bound to have a bad competition sometimes. We were due: all our experiences so far had been excellent. And, really, even though we didn’t place well, we had a good time and met some great new people. But our heads were not quite in the game. Up until Friday morning we were undecided about whether we’d even attend the competition and that affected our performance. Also, we’ve been dancing a lot of the same steps and routines for about a year and a half now and we think we need some new material. It’s too easy to zone out during a round if you are just auto-piloting through your steps.

So now we have some ideas about what to work on for the rest of this year and early next year. No more competitions in 2009; the calendar for 2010 is to be decided but likely to include the Triangle Open (Raleigh, NC in February) and possibly the Royal Palm Dancesport Extravaganza in Coconut Creek, FL in January. Who doesn’t love Florida in January?

We are back from the Hotlanta Dance Challenge/Rising Star Newcomers’ Ball after dancing 18 heats on Friday, 18 on Saturday, and 28 today–by far the most we have danced at any competition we’ve participated in.  I expected to have fun but it was even MORE fun than I imagined.  So much positive energy and excitement.  And it was great to see Carson, Elaine, John, Jorge, and Suzanne, who all came up from Macon at various times and stopped in to see us.  Props also to Bill & Grace for letting us stay at their condo.  All in all it was an amazing weekend.

We danced well (most of the time!) and placed pretty well–a lot of 1st places thanks to being uncontested in our category, but some “real” 1sts too.  The great thing about dancing so many events is that you have room to make some mistakes without feeling like you’ve blown all your chances.  Eddie said he just wanted us to get comfortable on the floor and by the end of today, we definitely were.  I knew we’d get better at managing our nerves and cooperating on the floor, and we did.  What I didn’t expect was to also learn how to keep our energy up when the dances just keep coming.  It’s one thing to go all-out in practice but having to be “on” and give a performance multiple times over a period of hours. . . well, we found reserves of charisma we didn’t know we had!

I will post results in a couple of days when I’ve had a chance to compare our heat list with the program.  We did not get any videos, unfortunately: personal video was not allowed and the “official” video service was just too expensive.  Elaine took some pictures for us that I need to look at and get posted, and DecaDance Photography was there taking professional pictures, so I should be able to link to their gallery.  Stay tuned!

The heat lists for the Hotlanta Dance Challenge came out last night.  We initially entered just a few amateur events, but Eddie wanted us to dance more.  Now we are doing 64 heats!  Most of them are single dances, so that’s not quite as crazy as it sounds, but it’s still a heck of a lot.  So if you want to see us dance this weekend, here are the specifics:

The competition is being held at the Crowne Plaza Hotel at Ravinia, 4355 Ashford Dunwoody, Atlanta 30346.

• Friday, we are dancing almost straight through from 9:50 a.m. to noon in the Rising Star ballroom.
• Saturday, we dance from 11:30 to noon and from 12:45 to 1:45 in the Rising Star ballroom.
• Sunday, we dance at 10:45, 11:00, and from 11:45 to 2:10 (with a few breaks), mostly in Ballroom A but a few heats in Ballroom B.

We are very excited to be participating in such a huge competition.  No matter the results, we are sure to have a great time!  We would love to have a cheering section, too.  Hopefully you can come and see us in action!  Here’s the link to buy spectator tickets.  Tickets are for admission to both the Rising Star ballroom and the Hotlanta ballroom where the top professional and pro-am couples will be dancing, so you can definitely see a lot of great dancing.  Several very enticing vendors will be on hand as well, so if you are a fan of shoes and gowns, bring your credit card (or leave it in the car…).

Hope to see you this weekend–remember to cheer for couple #300!

Last week I attended the ballroom dance competition at the Georgia Golden Olympics.  In the past, this competition has not been very well attended.  This year the area’s USA Dance chapters promoted the event for months in advance, and it paid off.  The two chapters (#6059 Greater Macon and #6100 Houston County) entered a total of 7 couples.  Isabel and Azmi Kabbani from Greater Macon Chapter #6059 swept the gold medals.  Congratulations, Dr. and Mrs. Kabbani!  All the competitors had a great time:

It was hard to sit on the sidelines of a competition without doing any dancing myself.  Luckily we will get our turn in just a few weeks at Hotlanta and High Point.

Click here to see videos of all of our dances at last weekend’s SouthernStar Midsummer Classic.  Thanks again to our awesome videographer Jeff for wielding the camera and enduring many hours on a metal folding chair!  Here’s one video from the playlist just to get you started.  This is silver-level swing; we got straight first places from the judges for this one!

Click through to YouTube to see the rest.

Every competition we participate in brings new pleasures.  At this year’s SouthernStar Midsummer Classic in Tampa, FL we got to see a couple we met last year as spectators, John and Theresa, “graduate” to the next level and become competitors.  They are such nice, fun people–last year, despite our being strangers to them, they agreed to take video for us with Daniel’s digital camera.  Now they are obviously on their way to becoming great dancers: they got two 1st places and two 2nd places out of the 8 events they entered!  Yaaay, John & Theresa!

With our former photographers now sharing the competition floor with us, we needed someone new on video duty.  Our extremely obliging friend Jeff, who teaches with me at Macon State, made the trip to Tampa with us and spent the whole day Saturday in the folding chairs of the spectator area, wielding the camera.  We are so glad to have videos of nearly all our heats.  Thanks, Jeff!

Considering how little we’ve been able to dance and practice since we went to Raleigh back in February, we went into this competition with minimal expectations.  We were rewarded with excellent results!  Our goals were to place better than we did last year and to make one callback in each of the Challenge events we entered.  We achieved all of those goals except for one Challenge where we didn’t get a callback.  So we are very happy with our results and with the positive comments we got from other dancers.  It’s pretty exciting when a Championship-level dancer looks you right in the eye and says “You guys are really good!”

Here are our results:

• SouthernStar Rhythm Challenge (Cha-cha/Rumba/Swing): did not advance from semifinal
• Bronze American Rhythm (C/R/S): 2nd place out of 8
• Bronze American Smooth (Waltz/Tango/Foxtrot): 2nd place out of 7
• SouthernStar Smooth Challenge (W/T/F): advanced from quarterfinal to semifinal
• Silver American Rhythm (C/R/S): FIRST place out of 4; this event was a $50 scholarship from the Dayton chapter of USA Dance.

Because of some scheduling conflicts we’ve decided against competing at the Derby City Dancesport Championship in August and are instead aiming for the High Point Classic Dancesport Championship in October in High Point, NC.  After this past weekend we are very excited to keep improving our dancing and to do even better at our next comp.

We’ve been lying low for the past few weeks because Daniel has been having trouble with his right knee hurting and swelling, especially when he dances.  He saw his doctor last week and the doctor advised him not to dance till he’d seen an orthopedist.  Today we heard back from the doctor’s office and they had set him up an appointment with the orthopedist for Monday morning.  I’ve been down the “knee problem” road before and I’m hoping his diagnosis will be similar to mine, i.e., something that physical therapy can solve.

Meanwhile, we had to decide against competing in Baton Rouge at the end of this month, which is a big disappointment to both of us.  But unless the doctor tells us differently, we are still planning to compete in Tampa at the end of July and in Louisville, KY in mid-August.  Louisville will be our biggest competition so far, but Tampa will be our first repeat appearance at the same competition, which is pretty cool.  Last year’s trip to Tampa was my first experience of how welcoming and friendly amateur competitors are.  We’re looking forward to going there again.

American society doesn’t give us many reasons to look forward to getting older, but continuing to dance for the next several decades is one aspect of aging that I look forward to.  The ballroom world is full of people who are still dancing in their 80s and beyond.  Locally, the Georgia Golden Olympics provides a competitive outlet specifically for “older” dancers (you have to be at least 50).  Our friends Elaine Smith and Jorge Buendia  danced at last year’s Golden Olympics and won gold medals in all 4 dances: waltz, tango, foxtrot, and swing.  They worked hard preparing in lessons with Fran and it totally paid off!  This year their picture is on the promotional flyer for the ballroom event:

How cool is that?

In 2009 we will be going to Louisiana twice: once to New Orleans for the PCA/ACA annual conference (not dance related at all, though there are some conference sessions about dance) and once to Baton Rouge for the Gumbo DanceSport Championships, June 26 and 27, 2009.  “Gumbo DanceSport Championships” is funny enough, but this event used to be called “Gumbo of Ballroom” until USA Dance decided that all National Qualifying Events had to be called the “[Something] DanceSport Championships.”

Just looking at the entry form puts a smile on my face–and, to be honest, makes my palms sweat slightly.  In addition to the syllabus events we’d normally enter they have an “Open Six-Dance” event for all competitors below Gold level, plus “Cabaret” and “Theatre Arts” events.  I’m not actually sure what those last two are, but I’d like to find out, because I’m all about lots of dancing.  USA Dance comps are so great because they charge a flat entry fee for as many dances as you can enter (as opposed to charging per heat).

The only challenge will be getting out of town in time to get ourselves there for the competition.  According to the tentative schedule we’ll be dancing on Friday afternoon, which means leaving here Thursday so we can get a good night’s sleep in before we compete.  I am supposed to teach till 12:30 on Thursday but I suppose we could leave after that.  I don’t like to drive at night, but Daniel does, which is one of the many things that make us such a good team.

Gumbo, here we come!