Are recalls and placements good enough feedback?

[DanceMentor]

Doesn't it seem a little limited when often the only feedback you get is whether you got recalled or what place you got? I guess really the only way to follow up is to pay a judge to give you coaching and ask them directly about their opinion?

 

[Warren J. Dew]

Honestly, I often find the aggregate result is fine. Coaches can provide the detailed information I want; it doesn’t have to come from the judges. Ultimately the way to get a better result is to dance better.

 

[DanceMentor]

Honestly, I often find the aggregate result is fine. Coaches can provide the detailed information I want; it doesn’t have to come from the judges. Ultimately the way to get a better result is to dance better.

Do you feel like certain judges have things they want to see that others don't, or maybe pet peeves? Or on the other hand, maybe your teacher (or yourself) don't really know what "dance better" means well enough to get better marks?

 

[Warren J. Dew]

Do you feel like certain judges have things they want to see that others don't, or maybe pet peeves?

Back when I was competing and paid more attention to the marks, sure. Rarely did judges want to see things that other judges specifically wanted to see avoided, but often they had hot button things they wanted to see that other judges cared less about.

However, one can waste lots of time trying to find things that will please certain judges or certain subsets of judges that will change the opinion of most judges not at all. Chasing marks in this way often ends up being a waste of, or at least inefficient use of, time.

Or on the other hand, maybe your teacher (or yourself) don't really know what "dance better" means well enough to get better marks?

Certainly I spent plenty of time watching videos trying to figure out what “better” dancers were doing that “worse” dancers were not.

With regard to the coaching, at a minimum, recall the “pyramid” model for International Standard pedagogy. One’s particular coach might prefer one particular “school” - scaling one particular “side” of the pyramid - but all four schools led to the same top. To the extent that “dance better” means “get closer to the top of the pyramid”, there isn’t really going to be much disagreement regarding what “better” means, even of there’s plenty of disagreement regarding how to get there.

In addition, coaches often have some idea where their limits are, and when students start approaching those limits, may recommend alternative coaches to go to.

 

[fiesta0618]

Doesn't it seem a little limited when often the only feedback you get is whether you got recalled or what place you got?

Yes, but also no.

In my view, contest results have value because they are the closest we can get to objective feedback. The price we pay for that "objectivity" is a total loss of descriptiveness--there is no feasible way for us to understand exactly why another couple was rated better than us. Not even this...

I guess really the only way to follow up is to pay a judge to give you coaching and ask them directly about their opinion?

Following up with a judge doesn't actually fill this gap, for a couple reasons. First, you will at best understand only one of the votes on your card, and your result is the aggregation of many. Second, an individual judge's mark isn't a measure of your absolute skill; it is a snap evaluation where you fall in the hierarchy of this specific slice of the field at exactly the time they were looking. Only in aggregate does the inherent noise of this smooth out into something we can draw conclusions from. I think about it as a sort of "data sample", where each individual point is not really valuable by itself.

Nonetheless, I do think that studying with judges is a good idea, because "buying a mark" (to give it the crassest label) is a real thing. But I wouldn't do it as a way to make my competition feedback more descriptive and explanatory--for that, I rely on the home-base coaches who know me, know the roadmap ahead of me, and have personal investment in my success.

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Bottom line: we need many different kinds of feedback to best guide our growth. Variety is important, because the different feedback mechanisms are useful in different ways. Competition feedback is valuable because it provides an insight we can't get any other way, but it can't tell us *everything* we need to know. We should remain wary about over-reading or over-relying on it.

 

[Warren J. Dew]

But I wouldn't do it as a way to make my competition feedback more descriptive and explanatory--for that, I rely on the home-base coaches who know me, know the roadmap ahead of me, and have personal investment in my success.

For the record, I find that using judges as visiting coaches - who happen to be in town regularly - can be useful for this. However, it’s less a matter of getting more descriptive competition feedback and more a matter of taking advantage of visiting coaches when available, and I’d be a bit selective about which judges to use as coaches.

 

[Arun Garg]

Bottom line: we need many different kinds of feedback to best guide our growth. Variety is important, because the different feedback mechanisms are useful in different ways. Competition feedback is valuable because it provides an insight we can't get any other way, but it can't tell us *everything* we need to know. We should remain wary about over-reading or over-relying on it.

This is the true answer. Full rounded development means listening to all feedback mechanisms from trusted/qualified sources.

 

[DanceMentor]

For the record, I find that using judges as visiting coaches - who happen to be in town regularly - can be useful for this. However, it’s less a matter of getting more descriptive competition feedback and more a matter of taking advantage of visiting coaches when available, and I’d be a bit selective about which judges to use as coaches.

Yes, that was pretty much my strategy when I was competing.