10th Annual UConn Ballroom Dance Competition

[hbetx9]

Come one Come all!!! Our registration is working now ( Many many thanks Eric! ), and so consider this a reminder to register and compete at our 10th annual competition on our new ( non-conflicting date ) 10/13. See our website for details and registration info, go to www.uconnballroom.com/comp, the registration tab is on the second bar. We are again in our usual venue ( E.O. Smith H.S. ) with plenty of practice space and a beautiful floor, wonderful music and a top judging staff including ( Ian Folker, Stephen Hevenor, Armin Kappacher, Peter Kovacs, Russell Monk, Helle Rusholt, Mark Sheldon, Gunnar Sverrisson, Leonid Turetsky, Misha Yalovenko) There are plenty of events offered at all levels, and the competition is already starting to heat up, the open divisions are filling ( at least one couple in every open division so far except rhythm, come on RLJ! ), so get your names in soon. Of course you do not want to miss our professional showcase featuring this years Blackpool Standard Vice Champions Jonathan Wilkens and Katusha Demidova.

Hope to see you there! :)

[hbetx9]

I forgot to add, we have changed our rules allowing couples dancing open in a particular style to dance silver in other styles, more events for the specialist!

[White Chacha]

The website indicated above now says:

"Due to unforseen cirsumstances, Jonathan and Katusha will not be able to make our competition as our showcase couple. We will now be having Garry and Rita Gekhman as our showcase."

[and123]

*sniff*:sad:

[JohnLL]

Congrats to UConn on running another great comp! I managed to get down there just in time for the Gekhman's "robot showcase" which was amazing by the way. Everything ran well and on time as far as I could tell for the afternoon. Congrats to all the competitors who did so well and I hope everyone had as good a time as I did. :-)

[and123]

Thanks to Eric for getting the results up so fast! :shock:

[NielsenE]

Thoughts on the competition...

Amazingly wonderful show, of course :)

I felt that more care should have been taken of the Newcomer events, especially early in the day. With the pre-HBC date for the first time, UConn has to deal with "unblooded" newcomers and I think more nurture/patience/shepherding would have been appropriate.

It was a slightly more hectic competition for me at the scrutineer station as I had to use a workaround to to print anything all day long, but aside from the last session it didn't seem to cause a pile up of sheets to score. The final session was harder because they packed the floor (less time between rounds with fewer heats to enter marks) and added extra judges through all the rounds) ... The printing issue is why I never got marks printed out for review at the venue, but I think I made good by getting the on-line marks up saturday night.


I'm not sure what i thought about the tables instead of bleachers on the left hand side of the room.


Schedule wise...the competition was slightly late throughout the morning, made up some time during the show, and then ended about 30-40 minutes early. The event was scheduled to run from 8-8. In my opinion there's is still room for 1-2 hours of growth in the competition and having it remain a single day. This should accommodate enough growth for another 1-2 years without changing the event structure. However, I think the judging panel would need to be split into two shifts.

[and123]

I left after Standard, so I don't know how the rest of the day went. It would have been helpful to announce how events were being interleaved. It was hard to strike a balance between "OK, I'm going to stand by since my event is probably coming up soon" or "I'm going to sit down and have my butt fall asleep and then get yanked onto the floor at a moment's notice". And having the n00bs called to go and line up while the pre-champ Standard dancers were still dancing was a little distracting. Glad that Russell seemed to be in a decent mood this time though :cool:

[NielsenE]

I left after Standard, so I don't know how the rest of the day went. It would have been helpful to announce how events were being interleaved. It was hard to strike a balance between "OK, I'm going to stand by since my event is probably coming up soon" or "I'm going to sit down and have my butt fall asleep and then get yanked onto the floor at a moment's notice". And having the n00bs called to go and line up while the pre-champ Standard dancers were still dancing was a little distracting. Glad that Russell seemed to be in a decent mood this time though :cool:


Oh yeah, agreed. Not sure where the ball was dropped on that... Often I've shown up having produced an expected round-by-round schedule, only to find that the chairman also has... Seeing how it takes me an hour or two to generate it, I've stopped producing them in favor of the chairman's copy. But on the occasions like UConn, where neither of us brought a schedule, the MC is left winging it, with only 1-2 event look-ahead from the CoJ.

[jumpingbeens]

As a whole I thought the competition went very well. My only complaints are:

1) As Eric said, more care should have been taken with the newcomer events. It felt as though the competition assumed that the newcomers knew what they were doing in terms of when and where to line up and how to check the screen for recalls, etc., but I found that many newcomers were confused, and some missed lining up for their events and others didn't realize that they had been called back.

2) As And123 said, the interleaving of events, especially around the show, was very confusing! I didn't like how gold danced, then watched the show, danced, watched, etc. without warning. It would have been nice to just be able to relax and watch the show instead of wondering if I was going to have to jump up and dance again.

3) I did not like that half of the room was set up with tables instead of bleachers...bleachers are so much better! Please bring back both sides of bleachers next year.

[NielsenE]

Oh, also , I think the projector needed to be put somewhere else... the amount of competitor traffic behind the head table was very distracting, plus I think it wasn't the most visible spot for competitors to easily get to it. Perhaps move it down the long wall to the other end, (don't block the on-deck entrance with a mob, but the other door.... or even put it in the lobby...)

[and123]

.... or aim it higher up (on a wall maybe?) so people don't BLOCK it by congregating in front of it :rolleyes:.

I understand the need for time between the showcase dances (esp. when they had to dip themselves in silver paint), but a few general dances would have been better, even if it added time to the schedule. Keeping the gold/pre-champ dancers randomly waiting/dancing was, I would presume, annoying to them.

[NielsenE]

.... or aim it higher up (on a wall maybe?) so people don't BLOCK it by congregating in front of it :rolleyes:.



At least it wasn't quite as bad as all the people "sleeping" in front of the project at Harvard Invitation on Sunday, using up most of the warm up space

[Chris Stratton]

always thought those two day comps should provide a crash area, with an alarm that rings a half hour before each new session.

[RIdancer82]

At least it wasn't quite as bad as all the people "sleeping" in front of the project at Harvard Invitation on Sunday, using up most of the warm up space

ugh..... don't remind me, lol :) I was starting to wonder if someone slipped a DVD into the laptop the way they were all laying sprawled across the floor watching it!

[RIdancer82]

I understand the need for time between the showcase dances (esp. when they had to dip themselves in silver paint), but a few general dances would have been better, even if it added time to the schedule. Keeping the gold/pre-champ dancers randomly waiting/dancing was, I would presume, annoying to them.

I agree.... had I been dancing those events, I would have found it slightly annoying the way the performances were interleved. Interleving Newbie/Bronze events would be one thing, but leave the higher level events together.

[dbk]

Oh, also , I think the projector needed to be put somewhere else... the amount of competitor traffic behind the head table was very distracting, plus I think it wasn't the most visible spot for competitors to easily get to it. Perhaps move it down the long wall to the other end, (don't block the on-deck entrance with a mob, but the other door.... or even put it in the lobby...)

Doesn't that depend on, basically, the length of the wire from the judges' table?

[jumpingbeens]

As an aside, I saw two photographers at the event...does anybody know where they post their pictures?

[Joe]

.... or aim it higher up (on a wall maybe?) so people don't BLOCK it by congregating in front of it :rolleyes:.
Ceiling FTW! :)

[dbk]

As an aside, I saw two photographers at the event...does anybody know where they post their pictures?

One of the photographers (the one who had his laptop near the results projector) is at sepiaperspectives.com. He has VERY good pictures (although I don't think they're up just yet).

[NielsenE]

Doesn't that depend on, basically, the length of the wire from the judges' table?

Well the computers are on a wireless connection, so there is a range limitation. Often I just use a "computer-to-computer" impromptu network, however I normally have a much stronger hub with me that I could use if more distance is needed.

[BM]

As an aside, I saw two photographers at the event...does anybody know where they post their pictures?

This is the other gentleman's website:

http://www.photoshelter.com/usr-show?U_ID=U0000VDIeNrTqxCY

I usually see him at the collegiate comps, so I've got his page bookmarked. ::grins::

[RIdancer82]

Actually BM, that's the same guy (G Images) that dbk posted a web address for as well.

[BM]

Mea culpa. I saw him walking around most of the time and didn't even notice his computer at the judges' table, so I assumed that I was linking the other person. Oops . . . :doh: