I plan to write more on ballroom competition specifics over the next couple of weeks, but right now I am preoccupied with ice dancing.
It's been a long time since I watched figure skating with any regularity. After I discovered ballroom, skating didn't have the same appeal. Partly, of course, this is because I don't skate. But partly I suspect this is because I watch the skating and think, if this is in the Olympics, DanceSport definitely should be!
The ice dancers had a compulsory dance, which this time was tango. The dance they all had to use was choreographed back in 1974, according to the commentators, and looked extremely dated to anyone dancing tango in this century. It was helpful to get a feel for some of the common elements, though, and to start being able to see the different proficiencies of the couples.
There isn't really an equivalent in DanceSport to the compulsory. In championship DanceSport, it would be considered bad taste (if not plagiarism) to use a well-known piece of choreography created by another couple. It's possible to reference other performances, of course. A couple in America's Ballroom Challenge one year used big sections of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers' "Cheek to Cheek" choreography from the movie "Top Hat" in a foxtrot show dance, but it was clearly an homage; the dancers were essentially in character as Fred and Ginger. Much to my astonishment, one of the commentators didn't seem to recognize the piece.
In DanceSport, there are always four or five dances the couple has to perform, almost always with other couples on the floor. Each dance might contain certain elements the couple is required to perform - as in syllabus competition, where there are certain figures beyond which you must not stray - but the order in which they perform them, their transitions, their physical lines, and much else are unique to each couple. There are things you mustn't do, more than things you must do.
Sometimes, elements of a dance are unique to a particular repetition of the dance: with multiple dancers on the floor, there is not always a clear space where you need one to proceed with a piece of choreography. But you can't stop dancing and wait! You have to continue dancing, employing lead & follow, until space opens up to continue. This is one of the many factors that DanceSport judges look for.
The Original Dance
The second ice dancing event was the original dance, which this time had a theme of "folk" dance. There were: an "aboriginal" dance, about which the less said the better; a can-can; a tarantella; a Hebrew dance; a Moldavian dance; a flamenco; a Bollywood dance; and three country two-steps. The Bollywood routine and the flamenco were very good, but I have to say, the country two-step was uniquely well-suited to ice dancing; it's very progressive, using a lot of turns and position changes, and so the versions on the ice looked very much like a good C2S on the dance floor.
Overall, the nature of the sport limits how much the action can really look like dancing. The most appealing "dancey" moves that were clearly only possible in skating were the spins, which I love (including "twizzles"), and the spirals. Most of the other "dancey" stuff would look a lot better without the skates. I found the lift sequences distracting; I cannot account for why they would mount a lift, immediately change the position, change it again and again and then dismount. There was so much moving around up there, only one or two couples managed to produce a position that was attractive to look at - or that looked like they were dancing.
DanceSport does not allow lifts, except in two "show dance" categories called Cabaret and Theatre Arts. There's usually a "show dance" category at the top NDCA competitions for professionals, as well as at the national amateur events, but these aren't typically seen in chapter or regional competitions. Dancers can't use momentum to accomplish lifts the way skaters can, and amateurs often can't afford the specialized coaching required to safely attempt lifts.
Many ballroom instructors, I might add, are not qualified to teach this material. If you are looking to learn lifts, find one of the absolute top professional couples and pay the extra rate; these are the couples who do lifts themselves in competition and are least likely to end up injuring you. (Locally, Carolina and Felipe Telona, Tony Dovolani and Elena Grinenko, or Jonathan Roberts and Anna Trebunskaya are good bets.)
High Desert will have a workshop on lifts this year which I anticipate will be quite crowded. A lift can provide the big moment you need to take a routine into "show" quality. It can also be a sad thing to watch if attempted by people who don't have the physicality to support it. Most of the time, I feel that lifts do not contribute much to the beauty of a dance. Moreover, they can really bring the action to a screeching halt. Partner dancing should never be about one moment. We're not looking for that quad jump equivalent. The greatest dancers are the ones you never want to stop watching, because every moment leads so inevitably and perfectly to the next.
The Free Dance
The "free dance" routines were all what dancers would call "lyrical." Heavy on the ballet shapes, heavy on the drama; the only couple using humor was the retiring French couple. The "free dance" equivalent in DanceSport would really only be a show dance; in DanceSport, traditionally there have been no solos. All competitions are group competitions, with winners selected from a pool of dancers who all dance at the same time. However, there is a possibility (maybe even a likelihood) that this will change in the future.
It can be quite a challenge to watch a six-couple DanceSport final and try to decide who you like the best. At the championship level, as in any sport, there is very little that separates the top competitors. Television viewers are now quite accustomed to watching ballroom solos, and if top competitions included a solo event for finalists, I think television sports producers would find DanceSport more intelligible, more commentary-friendly, more likely to produce DanceSport "stars," and more purely entertaining.
Humor and lightness, almost entirely absent from the ice dancing I saw this week, play a big part in ballroom dancing. The swing styles, cha-cha, and samba in particular require a cheeky approach in which the audience is invited to laugh with the couple. Quickstep and Viennese waltz are light, happy dances. Foxtrot in the American style is jazzy and theatrical. It's an advantage for a dancer to be able to quickly switch gears in order to express the character of the dances properly. I think it's probably also what makes ballroom such a great lifetime sport: you always have such a terrific variety to work with, you can't get bored or burned out.
Variety also plays a big part in choreography. Anyone dancing in championship competition has already progressed through years of training in the syllabus for their dance styles. That means they have thirty or more "school figures" from each dance to draw from in creating choreography. And good dancers can mix and match: there is nothing to stop a championship couple from using a tango figure in a rumba or bolero, for example, or a swing figure in a foxtrot. In contrast, the ice-dance couples used fewer than twenty common elements, which were the same no matter what dance they were purporting to represent. The only real variety in their routines came from transitions - which is also where top DanceSport couples can be super creative.
You can probably tell from all this that I am even more fired up about competition now. I hope that the presence of the USA Dance Nationals here in Los Angeles in April will result in some television coverage for our sport. I really believe that if more people had a chance to watch it happen, DanceSport would no longer be considered a long shot for the Olympics.
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