Feedback on the SJSU classic

[Flyingkamakiri]

After speaking with some competitors of the recent SJSU Ballroom Classic, I wanted to collected feedback on its performance. This is only meant to increase my knowledge of collegiate competitions and what is needed to organize them properly. Hopefully I can come to understand how other competitions run in comparison and if those differences are either positive or negative.

Rules/Guidelines:
-Nothing will be held against parties that participate. You are welcome to list what you felt went well and what went wrong.
-Please be constructive with your criticism. You are encouraged to offer your own solutions for things that you felt were a problem.
-Please be polite and eloquent with your feedback. Refrain from unnecessary inflamatory comments or excessive profanity. Violators will have their feedback disregarded.

Thank you. The information contributed will definitely be put to good use.

For me personally I liked most of the music they played this time around. Much better then last years. But on the downside, I didn't like how they put Night club and gold events in the evening session. It caused some grief for some people i knew and it seemed a little weird when they were holding Open Standard and Smooth heats between the night club heats.

[SDsalsaguy]

Refrain from unnecessary inflamatory comments or excessive profanity. Violators will have their feedback disregarded.
Actually, according to DF Guideline #4, no profanity or deliberately inflammatory remarks are welcome here on DF. ;)

(Hope you get some helpful feedback!)

[Flyingkamakiri]

Actually, according to DF Guideline #4, no profanity or deliberately inflammatory remarks are welcome here on DF. ;)

(Hope you get some helpful feedback!)

Sorry your wording is a bit hard to understand. What does that mean exactly?

[SDsalsaguy]

Sorry your wording is a bit hard to understand. What does that mean exactly?
In your original post you asked for people to refrain from unnecessary inflammatory comments or excessive profanity, whereas no deliberately inflammatory remarks or profanity are allowed here. In other words, people need to behave better than you were willing to let them get away with. ;)

[TAK]

I agree that the music was good for the most part but I thought there were a few issues with it, for example I just watched one of our tango rounds again and the music is 35 MPM (international tango is supposed to be 31-33).

In the open international events, I would have loved for Open to have been a 4-dance instead of 5-dance event. For example at Stanford (and Berkeley?) I believe Advanced Latin is CSR+J (separate jive event) and Open is CSRJ+P (separate paso). The unfortunate reality is that collegiate comps in the area can't seem to attract much of an open-level field, and there are so few actual champ-level dancers in the area anyway. So in order to survive, Open basically needs to accept pre-champ dancers. I believe this is the second year in a row (?) there has been no Open Latin event at SJSU and it might have something to do with paso being required (at least, my partner and I would have entered otherwise). Compare to Open Standard, where there were only one or two couples who didn't also enter Advanced -- I'm guessing all the novice/prechamp couples were willing to enter because you can kind of fake your way through VW even if you haven't worked on it much. (Though a teammate told me she wished she didn't have to do VW, too.) There is no faking paso!

Also, I wondered why, in final rounds with more than 6 couples, the 7th/8th places were not announced and did not receive ribbons. It was kind of strange compared to the norm of everyone in the final hearing their result, and it even seemed insulting to the 7th/8th place couples who did not get acknowledgement or applause. Again, I don't think I have ever been at another competition that just ignored these couples.

Still, as I think I said in the other post, everything seemed to run smoothly and on time for the most part, and the atmosphere in the ballroom was terrific -- very lively and positive. So, a big thank you to the organizers...it was definitely a success!