Dancesport doesn't work as a sport

[Elizabeth]

Ballroom can very easily be adapted to this type of criteria. If you as a dancer leave something out of your routine, that is a deduction.

...Except that many of us believe that dancing a routine is not what ballroom is about. In fact, we believe that changing what you were planning on doing to react to conditions on the floor is a valuable skill called floorcraft.

Quick digression... A couple of years ago Schiavo and Mariner won Blackpool in spite of the fact that she was injured rather badly in the second round. As the round progressed you could see Schiave changing his choreography on the fly to favor her injured foot. You could tell when he forgot briefly and started to do a line that had her on the wrong foot because he came right out of it without fully developing the line. By the final he'd radically altered his choreography so as to put the least amount of stress on the bad foot. They danced beautifully and deserved their win, but it was his ability to react not only to the other couples, but to his partner's injury that was truly impressive. For me watching it, it was a good example of what ballroom is all about. Under your system they would have lost because they weren't doing their routine.

 

[tacad]

I suppose that since so much of ballroom is the competitions (for the record I'm strictly a social dancer) that that is why they classify it as dancesport. Like anything, you give criteria to be followed, judge it and it becomes a sport.

 

[tsb]

Some more education...

Gymnastics is not judged by people...gymnastics is judged against a Code of Points. Routines are built usind x-number of skills in which they attain a portion of their start value. Each skill is given a difficulty rating from A to SuperE. The remainder of the routine comes entirely from bonuses. You get a bonus for a clean connection (without a pause). You get bonuses for certain dance elements. Your routine is written on paper and presented to the judges before you even begin it. You win or lose based on the start value minus any deductions. Deductions come in many forms from form breaks to balance checks to falls to repeating a skill in the same routine to failure to totally complete a skill. For instance, on floor if you are supposed to be doing a triple pirouette and get a bit off balance and complete only 2.5 rotations to save yourself from falling...then you don't get credit for that skill and it drops your start value.

i'm sure the way controversy was avoided in judging the mens' all-around in the last olympics is what we can expect should ballroom dancing be judged by this criterion.

 

[TemptressToo]

The "controversy" was not a failure in the system, but a judging error. Those happen all of the time in most every sport. If it was such a bad system, figure skating and ice dancing would not have switched to it recently.

 

[zhanshenncsu]

Who care you call ballroom dance a sport or not? I am glad that I find the opportunity to dance. I am happy whennever the music starts. I consider it as a good form of exercise because it really tire me out.

 

[gte692h]

Re: dance is just not a sport

All I am really saying is don't knock dancesport just because some of us are looking for a higher level of intensity. Dancesport is highly competitive, athletic and the winners are usually the best and the ones who worked the hardest.

I respect and understand the sentiment. If the goal of competition is to improve or take a skill to a higher level, or to push it to its boundary, that's a noble goal. But at this level, I can call the competitors atheletes, or performers, but can I call them dancers ? Are they dancing at this point, or are they at a level that is beyond what I would call dancing ? (dancing here, by my definition - dance to express emotion )

When the goal of dancing becomes something other than self expression, in my book, I would begin to question if it is dancing anymore or what ?

Having said that, I totally understand the need to compete. If it is to push dance to new heights, great. But if it is just to massage the ego, and prove to oneself that 'i am the best dancer', then that seems like wasted effort.

 

[123N]

But at this level, I can call the competitors atheletes, or performers, but can I call them dancers ? Are they dancing at this point, or are they at a level that is beyond what I would call dancing ? (dancing here, by my definition - dance to express emotion )

But what would you call it: really good dancing?!

When the goal of dancing becomes something other than self expression, in my book, I would begin to question if it is dancing anymore or what ?

My take on this is that many people can write, but a few can write a best seller not to mention a classic. When watching top dancers perform, very often you see they create image and imagination beyond what a "normal" dancers can do. Still it is dancing.

However, I don't see the point nor value in equating dancing to a sport just so it will become an Olympic event. What a wast of effort.

 

[Joe]

You could very well be on the floor with several couples...because floorcraft would be a category judged.

Only if you're lucky.

 

[robin]

The "controversy" was not a failure in the system, but a judging error. Those happen all of the time in most every sport. If it was such a bad system, figure skating and ice dancing would not have switched to it recently.

There were several controversies, at least one of which was a judging error. Others happened *due* to the judging system, rather than in spite of it.

The biggest problem in my opinion is that they define what is a "best possible" routine. In the individual finals all the top gymnasts compete with a 10.0 start value, so the *only* difference between them is how many deductions they get. For example in the horizontal bar men's final, one of the officials commented:

"Nemov had a spectacular routine. But as a judge, you must see in the release at the beginning of the routine, there is a slight bend of his knees, which is a deduction," he said. "

It made not a jot of difference that his routine was more spectacular and more difficult than the other athletes, the value is 10.0 (the maximum) and after that all the judges do is deduct a point for this and a point for that. This sort of judging system instantly kills any possible further developments in a sport, if a routine is "as good as possible" why would you want to make it "better"???

I think the reason these systems are introduced is that it gives the judges something to hide behind. They can say "he got 9.387 while the other guy got 9.365, so the first guy won". The judge doesn't have to explain why he thought one athlete was better than the other, he just says "i deducted 0.1 points because his foot was turned out by more than 5 degrees when landing", but is that really what makes one gymnast better than the other?

The whole of the gymnastics (and incidentally ice-skating) world seems be full of complaints about their judging system. A fairly typical comment I found on some gymnastics news was:

"There wasn't a gymnast in the audience who didn't want Nemov to win," Ziert said. "But the rules didn't allow him to win. The judges gave the correct score, according to their rules. But the audience didn't want their rules, and coaches don't want their rules. But we've got their rules, because the judges control the sport."

Sports that are judged should be honest about it and not pretend to be precisely measured. Maybe for something like diving you have such a limited set of things they can do that you can measure it with a computer (ie angles, amount of splash, rotations, etc.), but for something like gymnastics or dancing, any complicated system will just increase the chances that the "wrong" person wins...

 

[robin]

Sorry, just one more point from the world of gymnastics. The comment is by the editor of a gymnastics magazine and former coach, but i've seen many like it:

"Ziert said Hamm watered down his high bar routine this year because he could do so under the FIG scoring system and maintain a maximum 10.0 start value, the value given the routine before deductions are taken. Hamm's coach, Miles Avery, has acknowledged that the routine is less challenging than the one Hamm performed last year while winning the world championship.

"It's the calculating Americans saying that we can take advantage of the code and do things easier," Ziert said. "The code now doesn't give you any credit for creativity and innovation. "

"It was smart gymnastics (by Hamm and Avery)," added former Olympic medalist Peter Vidmar, who is working in Athens for Westwood One radio. "Gymnasts today go by a formula: 'What is the easiest route to a 10.0 start, given my strengths and weaknesses? That's what I'm going to do.' "

 

[pianoman]

I'm just so confused now... I don't even know what my position is any more.

I think it's great that people push themselves to be better at dancing. But I'm just really disenfranchised with the US or for that matter the internation (I'm from Australia) ballroom dancing organizations.

But I can say this: in football or tennis or whatever, whether the ball is IN or OUT is sometimes subjective. For sure. But the question being answered subjectively is just a subjective interpretation of the FACTS. It is factual interpretation. If there could be perfect factual interpretation (i.e. replays, photo finish), then there would be very little disagreement

For me, the problem with dance as sport is there are two levels of uncertainty: ideological uncertainty and factual uncertainty. You have disagreement on WHAT ACTUALLY constitutes the best dancing, and then further disagreement on what actually happened because different judges perceive different things (they only get the opportunity to see a limited amount given time constraints with so many couples, and they all have different subjective opinions).

So while in boxing, we all know that the point is to score a hit, and we disagree over whether there was a 'clean' enough hit, or in gymnastics whether the foot was in fact turned out by 5 degrees or only 4.9 degrees, in dancesport we first subjectively decide what actually constitutes good dancing, and then subjectively apply our 'system' to judge. It is this 'double subjectivity' that I think makes dance not feasible as a sport.

 

[DanceAm]

Re: dance is just not a sport

All I am really saying is don't knock dancesport just because some of us are looking for a higher level of intensity. Dancesport is highly competitive, athletic and the winners are usually the best and the ones who worked the hardest.

I respect and understand the sentiment. If the goal of competition is to improve or take a skill to a higher level, or to push it to its boundary, that's a noble goal. But at this level, I can call the competitors atheletes, or performers, but can I call them dancers ? Are they dancing at this point, or are they at a level that is beyond what I would call dancing ? (dancing here, by my definition - dance to express emotion )

When the goal of dancing becomes something other than self expression, in my book, I would begin to question if it is dancing anymore or what ?

Having said that, I totally understand the need to compete. If it is to push dance to new heights, great. But if it is just to massage the ego, and prove to oneself that 'i am the best dancer', then that seems like wasted effort.

Not "other than self expression", "more than self expression".

I think your purist view is blinding you from understanding that humans have the capacity to experience things and express themselves on more than one level.

 

[robin]

What I was trying to say with the gymnastics example is that yes, it *is* possible to make strict rules and guidelines for scoring, such that if experts watched it in slow-motion on TV they could agree on
a) which element was performed and how much points it is worth
b) whether the exectution was "perfect" and how many points need to be deducted for previously defined "mistakes".

BUT a system like that will not reward creativity or innovation. It won't appreciate things that a gymnastics spectator would describe as "elegance", "flow" or any other number of vaguer attributes. It won't even reward a competitor for performing a certain figure better than anyone has before, maybe flying higher over the bar, etc. etc.

Even in a sport as simple and old as boxing, new judging systems can have odd consequences. Someone could dominate a fight, have his opponent on the brink of a knock out with 10 mighty punches, while losing the fight because he was tickled with a jab 11 times...

Creating a definitive points system for any competition fundamentally changes the objectives of the competitors. Gymnasts now don't strive to do more and better things than their predecessors, they merely get a routine with the maximum points score and eliminate anything that may give them deductions. I think this price is too much to pay for having an "objective" judging systems. What is the point in objectivity if it is not the correct object that is measured?

 

[Porfirio Landeros]

So basically, as flawed as the current DanceSport judging system is, it sounds like it is less restrictive than the Gymnastics judging, which in Gym, seems to be causing athletes to play-it-safe to win instead of pushing the field to raise-the-bar and take risks, such as in DanceSport.

This seems to go in line with Turtle's earlier contribution, where approaching competitive ballroom dancing as a sport has evidently improved the field in all areas, including the level of artistry and athleticism, as displayed by the superstars of the past and present.

 

[gte692h]

But what would you call it: really good dancing?!

who knows ? the point i was trying to make was that sometimes, the effort put into preparing for a dance competition (from my experience- choreography, video recording, all the technique with arm and body styling, the non-stop practicing)- is so extensive, i forgot that this was a dance, first and foremost.

My take on this is that many people can write, but a few can write a best seller not to mention a classic. When watching top dancers perform, very often you see they create image and imagination beyond what a "normal" dancers can do. Still it is dancing.

if this is the goal of performance and competition dancing, then that is a beautiful and noble thing ! i totally get that, and would really respect it, because somebody has got to push the limits and boundaries..create new vision, and spur our imagination.

i haven't seen this ideal being propounded by the folks I know, who compete, but if there are folks out there who think like this, that's good. i'm glad to know that its not all about ruthlessly winning and boosting one's dance resume, although that is a reality of the business.