DanceSport Talk

A message to parents

Mon, 10 Nov 2008 22:23:27 -0700

My heart broke recently when I witnessed the damage excessive parental pressure can have on kids involved in Ballroom DanceSport. During a competition, I watched a young couple -- about 10 or 11 years old -- that I've admired for the past couple of years. They performed very well, though they were up against strong, experienced competitors. I reflected on how far they had come, and when they were done, I went to tell them how impressed I was.

Imagine my surprise when I saw the young lady in tears. She felt she had made mistakes that cost them, and that it wouldn't be good enough to win. I learned that her parents were putting tremendous pressure on her to get the trophy, and according to someone who knew her well, they told her that there would be consequences if she didn't win.

It was so sad to see a young child crying, when she should be celebrating a great dance performance. This sport is not just about technical skill, but about entertainment presence -- a nebulous quality that requires confidence. How can you be confident when you're worried about your parents giving you the third degree if you don't win? A child's sense of self-worth should never come from winning. There's always someone, somewhere better. To desire to win is great, but the need to win is an empty, meaningless goal. Instead, kids should be taught to strive for and recognize improvement.

I know this happens to some extent in every sport. Parents often put pressure on their kids to do well, perhaps without even realizing it. The financial investment is significant, and parents want to feel that they are getting their money's worth. But this example shows just how much damage can be done with this kind of pressure.

So, my message to parents is to evaluate your messages to your kids about sports. Are you putting more emphasis on encouragement, or on criticism? Are you sensitive to how your intentions are being perceived? Take a moment to think about your last conversation with your child about the activity they are involved in -- did it end on a positive note?

Mexican Open tries audience voting

Wed, 29 Oct 2008 12:16:33 -0700

The Mexican Open held on October 22 experimented with an interesting new concept: audience voting during the finals. Televised live as a one-hour show airing in over 33 Central and South American countries, the audience was asked to phone in their votes. Audience votes counted for 50% of the total score, with the judges' votes counting for the other half. In some cases, the audience changed the result.

Is this the start of a new trend? Is it even an idea that should be considered? Personally, I think we need to debate this and ask ourselves many questions before going down this road any further. I'll list my reasons below, with a chance for you to share your thoughts through a survey:There is no doubt that audience participation brings increased interest in DanceSport, at least in the short term. We've seen how audience involvement in Dancing with the Stars and So You Think You Can Dance has created incredible passion and viewer support. I think it's a great way to enhance the enjoyment of "fun" or club closed events that have no official status. But I don't believe it's a great direction to go for the sport itself.

At the Mexican Open, the Standard championship went to Igor Litvinov and Julia Ivleva, whom the judges had placed second in 4 dances, but the audience placed first in all dances. Mikhail Avdeev and Anastasia Muravyeva, whom the judges had put first in Tango, Foxtrot and Quickstep, were ranked second by the audience, and because Igor and Julia won both Waltzes, they won the event. Other couples were also affected by differences between audience and judging results.

I don't think we have to worry that this kind of voting will grab hold quickly, if only because of the technical challenges involved. It costs a great deal of money to create an infrastructure that allows a live television broadcast tied to audience voting.

Trying such a thing with the audience sitting in the live event is perhaps a bit easier. You could conceivably hand out ballot forms to everyone in the audience and collect them at the end of the event. It would add extra time to tally these up, but you would also need special software to manage the whole thing, with some way to support an audit of the scores.

The bigger question is whether this is a good idea.

On the one hand, we have all watched competitions where we wondered "What were the judges thinking?" Often we judge on preferences that go beyond quality dancing, such as presentation. The audience often has a favorite couple that they like because of reputation or personality, who may not have the best technical excellence. Couples that are technically perfect are sometimes boring to watch.

On the other hand, judges see many qualities the audience cannot possibly see, and we need to respect that process. We need to respect the judges -- their experience and everything they represent in the sport. They're not perfect (who is?), but that applies even more dramatically once you include the audience. We've heard stories of judges who were drunk, or playing favorites or just not paying attention, but these are rare and do not represent the adjudicating process, just as incidents like this in the criminal justice system don't represent the norm. Once we include the audience as adjudicating officials, we open a Pandora's box and it may be difficult if not impossible to ever get the contents back inside.

What would audience participation do to the respect garnered to the sport itself?

What would it do to the way couples perform? I've been concerned about the way pure speed and athleticism have taken precedence over balance and musicality. How would audience voting influence this trend? Would we see more of it?

What about favoritism? Dancers sometimes accuse judges of favoritism. Imagine how that issue expands when the audience gets involved! Couples would begin to promote themselves to increase their recognition in advance of events, in an effort to stack the deck in their favor.

What about connection with each other? While I love seeing couples interact with the audience, I feel there has to be a balance. DanceSport needs to be about the couple interacting with each other as they tell a story on the floor. When they spend all their time interacting with the audience that's lost. If the audience is now part of the vote, you would certainly see more effort away from inter-couple connection and more dancer-to-audience interaction. I believe that would be a step backwards.

What about quality? I heard a judge commenting in a Congress just last weekend about the general loss of Samba bounce, making the Samba look more and more like a Cha Cha Rumba hybrid. Once the audience is involved, who cares little about Samba bounce, will we see an even more rapid decline of such qualities in dancing?

What does the audience know about proper form? Suppose a couple includes Hip Hop moves in their routine and the audience loves it. Other couples would follow suit and before long, these dances which have stood the test of time with gradual and carefully planned changes would become a form of dance anarchy. We've already seen this in the current season of Dancing with the Stars.

What about long-term impact? While the audience might get excited about voting for their favorite couples today, because this is all new, what will happen five years and hundreds of competitions later? What will that ultimately mean to the sport? Do we want to destroy an infrastructure which, while not perfect, has worked well? As I said, once you start something like this, it becomes really hard to go back to the model which worked.

I'd like to know what you think, so please take part in a survey to see how you feel about this concept. It will close November 17, and then I'll compile the results and submit them to the IDSF Presidium for consideration.

Click Here to take survey

When DJs miss the beat

Sun, 19 Oct 2008 20:07:40 -0700

At a recent competition, two songs caught my ear. Not because they were great pieces of music, which they were, but because they were completely inappropriate for the skill level of the event involved. I'd like to urge dance competition DJs to consider how every song played fits into the scheme of the event.

In this particular case, a Junior Pre-Bronze event -- young kids competing at a very early stage in their skill -- had to dance to a highly complex Waltz with no defined beat. Even championship couples would have found this song challenging, but at that level you can expect the dancers to make it work. In this case, it was simply unfair to the couples on the floor. Another poor song choice was a Tango played later for a Silver-level event, which was very smooth throughout, with no beat clearly evident.

It seems that many DJs just play music because it's labeled a certain way. They see a bunch of songs in the list that say "Waltz," and have a beat count inside the legal range, so they pick one. I would like to encourage DJs to plan ahead. Listen to the songs ahead of time. Make a list of what you'll play for which event, and make sure that you pick appropriate music for the skill level involved.

New competitors need songs with clearly defined beats, where they don't have to guess. Do your homework and know which songs to use for these skill levels.

As the skill levels go higher, you can use more challenging music, but make sure that it matches the character of the dance. Nobody on the floor wants to dance to a square Waltz with no swing, or a heavy Quickstep. Even the audience won't enjoy watching dancers trying to make something with their existing routines to a Cha Cha that has no edges.

Songs with complex bridges or that change their beat count (some music goes from 8-bar phrases to 10-bar phrases during the song) don't belong in any competition. Leave those for social dancing.

Dance DJs have a great responsibility. Make the most of it.

2008 World Super Stars Dance Festival DVDs now available

Sun, 12 Oct 2008 23:33:49 -0700

Superstars 2008

The popular World Superstars Dance Festival DVDs have just been released for 2008. Featuring the world's top professional champions performing individual show dances, these really are a must have for every ballroom dance enthusiast. They are beautifully filmed, and brilliantly performed. There are separate DVDs for Standard and Latin. Each one is over 2 hours long.

Latin Edition features:

Bryan Watson & Carmen (Germany)
Michael Malitowski & Joanne Leunis (Poland)
Riccardo Cocchi & Yulia Zagoruychenko (USA)
Sergey Surkov & Melia (Poland)
Peter & Kristina Stokkebroe (Denmark)
Franco Formica & Oxana Lebedew (Germany)
Maxim Kozhevnikov & Beata (USA)

Standard Edition features:

Mirko Gozzoli & Alessia Betti (Italy)
Arunas Bizokas & Katusha Demidova (USA)
Jonathan Wilkins & Hazel Newberry (England)
Timothy Howson & Joanne Bolton (England)
Christopher & Justyna Hawkins (England)
Jonathan Crossley & Lyn Marriner (England)

Danceshopper.com has them available for US$98.95 each. You might be able to find them elsewhere, but I didn't look to see who else offers them.

We're all in this together

Wed, 1 Oct 2008 09:49:51 -0700

I sat down with a gentleman I greatly admire in the DanceSport world. This professional has made a tremendous impact in my region through a strong vision, great leadership, and smart application of that vision to his business. He has transformed how local studios operate, and after some 20 years in the business still innovates and leads the way for others.

During our conversation, we talked about the silos that have been built over the years. The professional community has its silo. The amateurs have their organizations. The organizers try to cater to both, but favor one "side" or the other: you have competitions organized by USA Dance and other amateur organizations, and others organized by NDCA or other professional members. But at the end of the day, as Andy pointed out, we're all in this together. In a time when ballroom dancing has enjoyed more popular awareness than ever before because of television and movie coverage, the number of competitive dancers has gone down. Membership in DanceSport BC has dropped 30% from previous years.

Competitions drive interest in competing, which drives interest in private lessons. If there aren't enough competitions, teachers and coaches don't have enough work -- group dancing lessons only go so far and can't generate a living for any teacher. With less prospect for earning a living, there is also less interest in amateurs turning professional. If there aren't enough teachers, there can't be enough development of quality skills. This leads to fewer dancers having an interest in competing. If not enough dancers want to compete, there is no drive to organize more competitions. And you go full circle.

It is critical that amateurs and professionals work closely together to build the industry up. We need to put our resources together to create awareness of the sport and to help each group achieve its goals. Both groups have lots they can contribute to the other, but it has to begin with an interest in tapping those resources, leading to dialog and then action. Let's get started!

How's your stamina?

Thu, 4 Sep 2008 14:33:57 -0700

In the latest issue of Dance Beat (or Dance Bleat, as it was referred to by Donnie Burns recently), Maxim Chmerkovskiy made some interesting comments about the stamina levels of couples who dance. He said that he has noticed a consistent flaw in even the top couples, related to mental and physical preparation. He compares the activity level of dancing to figure skating and basketball, and doesn't understand how some couples find it challenging to dance through a five-dance semi-final, or a final round.

"How do they allow for technique/stamina to become non-existent after a minute of Cha Cha, forty five seconds of Samba and half way through Rumba?" he asks, then goes on to say, "Some couples barely 'live through' the third gipsy of Paso Doble and have zero mid-section action in Jive." He has found that even though he would have loved to mark some couples well as a judge, he couldn't, because they would finish the dance barely moving.

Maxim says he's a strong believer that great competition produces great couples and in his eyes this includes their level of stamina. I too have witnessed competitors -- sadly even the under-21 group -- coming off the floor almost collapsing from exhaustion. There's no excuse for that. We need to help motivate each other to stay fit enough to make it through several rounds of competition with energy to spare. Competitor practice is a great way to do that, since the regular effort of dancing five dances in a row multiple times for an hour and a half does a wonderful job of building stamina.

The PR of splitting

Sun, 31 Aug 2008 13:06:11 -0700

In the dance world, we see splits all the time. Dance partnerships are fragile things and changes are to be expected. But the most recent splits in the Standard world have created some interesting backlash that made me ponder the PR (public relations) aspect that top couples should consider in how they deal with these kind of changes.

Christopher Hawkins and Justyna Hawkins, who are married, have split. Timothy Howson and Joanne Bolton, who are not married but have been together for many years, have split. In both cases, injury of one partner have been key factors. Justyna has been struggling with foot problems that prevented her from competing for several months. Timothy has also found himself canceling major events due to injury. Now Chris Hawkins and Joanne Bolton have formed a new partnership.

Many people who compete are aware of the nature of dance partnerships and how or why changes like this happen. They know that it's perfectly legitimate to be married to someone and dancing with someone else. There are many others who instantly see this scenario and begin to draw conclusions of backstabbing and blind ambition. Already people are crying foul, suggesting that both are irresponsible for leaving a 'helpless' partner behind and implying that they are selfish and uncaring.

Top competitive dancers need to keep that reality in mind when announcing changes.

Were Timothy and Justyna the unwitting victims of selfish ambition? We don't know, but a properly organized public announcement would have gone a long way to avoiding this perception, whether true or not.

The way this new partnership was announced (that is to say, no official announcement at all), leaves lots of room for speculation. This will affect public perception and support for this new couple. What if the whole thing was arrived at in a friendly and mutually respectable way? If so, controversial opinion would be a sad way to start the new dance relationship. If not, it still would have helped to plan the communications properly.

When the audience doesn't care

Sun, 17 Aug 2008 16:02:12 -0700

While watching an Olympic event on TV, where the athletes were clearly not performing up to their normal standard, I was reminded of something Nigel said during the finale of this year's So You Think You Can Dance.

He said that the dancers looked a little tired. They had been working especially hard for this week's performances. There's no doubt that their dancing was not quite as strong as during the previous few weeks. Nigel's point was that you can't allow it to matter.

Nigel went on to say that the audience doesn't care if you're tired. They don't care if you're having a bad day, or you aren't feeling as strong as you should. For the audience, the moment you are on for your performance is all that matters.

Whether you're performing a show dance or a competition, somebody has paid money for you to provide entertainment to a group of people. Maybe it was the mall promoter, maybe the wedding couple, or the individual audience members who paid for tickets to be there. In any case, they deserve to be treated to the best show you can give. They don't care if you're tired. They don't care, nor should they, if you're having an off day. You need to perform and to do so brilliantly. Every time.

Naturally, professionals who make their living through dance understand this better than amateurs do. But the amateurs who "get it" and perform up to their highest level at all times will always have a significant edge over the others.

Measuring athletic capacity

Sun, 20 Jul 2008 17:14:54 -0700

As someone involved in a variety of cross-training activities to stay fit, I was curious how DanceSport measured up. A German university study in 1984 showed that championship Jive and Quickstep matched the heart rate, muscular intensity and oxygen demands of Olympic sprinters. So I strapped on my heart rate monitor and went off to Latin competitor practice.

I'm an avid cyclist, and felt that it made sense to compare my measurements to the demands of cycling. Though no longer in race shape, I can still hold my own on a road bike, but I no longer go on the long 170+ km rides I used to enjoy. On a typical 90-minute ride, I'll average 150-155 beats per minute, with bursts of over 200 on steep hills, and 180 on smaller hills. How did dancing measure up?

My average heart rate over the 2-hour practice was 144. While lower than a bike ride, this was better than I had expected, especially because it was not continuous -- there were short breaks between dances and longer ones between rounds.

The Jive was, not surprisingly, the most intense dance, reaching 176 bpm. The Rumba, a slow dance that still uses lots of internal muscles, was the least intense with a heart rate of 138 on average. The Cha Cha averaged 155, while the Samba and Paso Doble were slightly lower. To keep the average up, we danced all five dances three times in a row, then took a 3-minute break. During the break, my heart rate dropped to less than 100, which obviously had an impact on the average.

I would say that when it comes down to real-world comparison, DanceSport would be pretty equivalent to cycling in athletic intensity. The difference is that your effort is turned on and off rather than being steady throughout the workout. But a real competition is also much more intense than a competitor practice because of all the other factors involved.

I suspect that the Standard dances will have slightly lower demands on heart rate, though the intensity of the athletic exertion isn't all that much lower. I'll be testing these dances in an upcoming competitor practice to see how they compare. We're not at the same skill level in Standard, which will certainly affect measurements, but it still should prove useful information.

So if you want to stay fit, keep dancing. Or start dancing, if you haven't yet experienced this exciting athletic activity.

Practicing with Bluetooth

Fri, 11 Jul 2008 11:44:47 -0700

A friend introduced me to an interesting new training tool: an mp3 player that lets you sync two Bluetooth headsets at the same time, allowing both partners to listen to the same music while practicing.

I had watched them practicing with this setup, and was intrigued because it was so discreet and effective. It allowed them to practice in perfect sync to their music, regardless of what was playing on the speakers. So, I decided to give it a try. The system relies on two items: the Samsung P2 and Motorockr S9 bluetooth headsets. They are shown in the picture to give you an idea of the look and sizing.

The Samsung P2 mp3 player is halfway between the size of an iPod Nano and iPod Touch. It feels good and has reasonably good graphics, though being a long-time iPod user, the shortcomings of any other mp3 player are glaring. Unfortunately it does not support the Mac OS, so I have to launch Windows XP on my Mac to sync the player whenever I make changes.

The Motorola Motorokr S9 headphones are sports-style behind-the-ear Bluetooth headphones. They are comfortable and have a firm hold, so you can even use them in Latin or for Tango, with sharp head movements or spins, and not worry that they'll fly off. When dancing, they are surprisingly unobtrusive, so other people may not even notice you're wearing headphones. They also sport play/pause buttons and volume control buttons. The sound quality is better than I expected, quite impressive actually.

I was able to find two Motorokr S9s for just $49 each, and found a P2 for $149, so the entire combination set me back only $250, which is less than a typical iPod these days. I also picked up an ActionJacket to hold the P2 in place. It comes with a solid belt clip as well as an armband.

The only frustration is that this isn't an iPod. The cumbersome process of using the software to load the player, going through way too many steps to get to the music, and having to connect the headphones each time you turn them on takes away from the experience, but once you go through all that you enjoy a very smooth practice session. No more worrying about what the other dancers in the studio would like to listen to.