Amateur American Smooth

What about North American Smooth? :D
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NO WAY the Brazilians will get pizzed

and who doesn't want a 5'10" Brazilian girl to.....................dance with?:eek::D


Well, we've exported just about all the rest of our pop culture to them, why not?
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still haven't seen a Canadian moonwalk
 
Typically, I've known "Showdance" to be a choreographed solo which can include any number of dance styles.
 
Bailamosdance said:
Worldwide this is called Showdance, right?
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No.. Just "American" style. I did a congress workshop here, to one of the major Soc.in the UK , a few yrs back ,where i introduced Amer. style W and FT ( silver level ) and did refer to it as above.There are small pockets of schools here, using it. I teach all my beginners here ,the Amer.style Bronze/ Silver syl. ( Q.S. , the exception )
 
You'll be surprised, there's Canadian Smooth too ;) The style of dance is slightly different than American Smooth.
However, due to a not so sufficient number of Professional couples in American Style in Canada, the influence on the Amateur league is not strong enough... yet. But, on the other side, Pro-Am teachers love American Style to the point that we can easily collect a strong "B"-Scholarship Semifinal in Smooth and Rhythm.
 
dancelvr said:
Ok, I'll bite. What are the differences?
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The story is kinda funny, and my dance partner and I have a good laugh about it from time to time.
When we just started competing in Professional American Smooth category, the biggest influence on the Canadian side was, obviously, international style. We have done the biggest mistake all 10 dancers do, when when move from International to American. Thinking, "how hard can it be?" we merged right in. Created choreographies based on youtube videos, obviously had a lot of closed positions in our routines, and, due to lack of actual, professional information on the logical movement in American Smooth, had a lot of "power moves". To define "power moves" easily, think of very frequent syncopations, continuous movement around the line of dance and almost no stops for lines.... Bogus!
With all that package we would come to one of the US competitions, and at one point received a little comment from the judge:
"I got so tired by looking at you, because you guys move sooo much! Is that Canadian Smooth or something?"
We lol'ed to that and remembered that situation for the spices of future conversations with fellow dancers :)

"Canadian Smooth" - Is when you can dance twice around the whole floor in a minute and a half ;)
 
Egorich said:
"Canadian Smooth" - Is when you can dance twice around the whole floor in a minute and a half ;)
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It's interesting that you brought this up. I've told my pro many times that I don't have a good grasp of what is smooth. My smooth routines are built upon the basis of movement and power. Compared to other couples, we almost get an entire lap of dancing in by the time the song fades.
 
Canadian Smooth" - Is when you can dance twice around the whole floor in a minute and a half ;)
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all four of our smooth routines are like this... one of our coaches when they saw the new matieral said.."where are the rests?"

the mrs quipped.. at the end..

a few judges have told us tho they admire our athletic abilities they would like to see us "enjoy " the music more

a subtle hint to build in some slower developing lines and things
 
smidra86 said:
I think the biggest problem is calling it american smooth. As much as that sounds like it should span the continent, most people associate the word america with the usa. So they sometimes have an aversion to it due to its connotation. If we started calling it just smooth or found another term for the preceding word then it would catch on more I think. Because it is a beautiful style that is difficult as much as people like to think its easy.
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Yes, I think "american" part of the name is misleading, especially for newer people. Back almost 15 years ago, when I first came to a group class at a university where we lived back then, and had zero information about ballroom and about partner dancing in general, and the teacher said that she teaches american style dances, I just thought that it was because we were in United States, and the word "american" was in it for the benefit of foreign-born individuals like myself (I was fairly new to United States at the point, too). I thought that in europe there must be some "european style", but it didn't matter at that point, since I didn't live there anymore anyway. It took me a couple of years to discover the existence of international style, and with exception of quickstep and samba, I haven't worked on it until I started competing (I currently focus on smooth and standard in my pro-am competitive efforts).
 
I say "thing(y)" all the time, especially in smooth when I don't necessarily know the name for it: the whooshy thing, the spinny thingy, the time when we do that explosion thing, the thing with the arms.
 
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