DanceSport Day 1

My favorite part of DanceSport is the Formation teams. Today, I worked sound on the qualifying rounds for both the US National Youth Standard and Latin Formation competition. We had some great musical selection, costuming, and especially choreography. The first thing I recognize is the music, so let’s start with that.

We had musical edits from Queen, Harry Potter, Fiddler on the Roof, and Phantom of the Opera. One that I really enjoyed was Provo High School Varsity team that danced to a mix of music from the musical, Mary Poppins. I loved the beginning choreography – very creative and eye catching. Then, their costumes were so cute!

The team that caught my full attention that I must mention is the Pacific Ballroom Dance team from Washington. They are my favorite, so I’ll be rooting for them during finals. Their music reminded me of African type/cirque du soileil/with a hint of the Narnia soundtrack. My favorite, as a matter of fact. Simply beautiful music! Then, their costume were fantastic, I just couldn’t give them justice by describing them. The girls had a feather hairpiece that was tied in with a red streak of hair jetting down to makeup paint streaking down the eye. The men also had pain makeup creating streaks down the eye on their right side; kind of tribal appearance. I don’t know what it was about their choreography, but it really captured me. I thought they looked great with formation and timing, of course, I am not a judge and only work as a technician for Ballroom. If I wasn’t working Macbeth, I’d come to watch the Standard Formation competitions just to see how far they get.

The above were dances from Youth Standard. With the Youth Latin, music selections were: Michael Buble mix, West Side Story, two different Matrix mixes, Bollywood, Queen, and Hairspray. Bonneville High School from Idaho had a great rock medley. Loved it! Costume design was great – red and black. Timing looked good and so was formation. Had some humorous head bobbing and guitar strumming. Very well done! I just wanted to turn on some fog to complete the look. Some of the choreography moves were very well chosen. Timpview High School had an amazing edited mix of the Matrix. Superb! And their overall presentation was very well done. The men wore sunglasses, some choreographed moves were “Matrix trademark moves”, and it did well in capturing attention.

I seem to have made a lot of mistakes on the Latin Formation run. The first track had no dead time at the end so with this playlist rolling through tracks, I have to stop music at the end. The very last possible second apparently has a beat that I cut off. Oh well. I told the director to bring a new track with dead time if she wants that in there. Another director had a specific timing on the walk in for music, but I had muted the channel since the last number had no dead time and forgot to unmute. ALL DANCE TRACKS NEED DEAD TIME AT THE END!!!! Then, there was a number where my cue was when the men stomped. I wasn’t told a single man stomped four times first, then when all men did it in the center – GO music. Ballroom dancers and stomping: what is that? This isn’t the armed forces … or is it?

So, the way I run music for DanceSport is organize tracks from a list into a playlist. We use the Sonic Siren Jukebox software and I just play the first minute and fifteen seconds for each heat (each group of dancers). Sometimes, I just play it once or twice, but for others it can be six to eight times. It’s not too bad, although I have to pay attention to the paperwork in front of me and the tracks on the screen. It gets hard when others need to add files to the computer, set up other cd players, etc.

At one point in the day, one song got on my nerves! It’s a great cha cha “El Bodeguero” but the track quality killed me. It kept feeding back in the track. Can’t fix that on the board very easily. And I had to play it EIGHT TIMES!!! A high ringing even appears for a few seconds during the middle. Ug! Oh well. It is surprising how many poor qualities of music we get … even the formation tracks. It almost makes me wonder if it’s the speakers or something in the mixer… but we use these for concerts. No se.

I do love watching the dancers. Costumes are beautiful, some couples are great with their chosen choreography, others like to show off some great moves. I also like to recognize a few faces from the tour team. I am quite surprised that the morning is upper teams. I was expecting to see the bronze classes dance (entry-level courses – Dance 180, 184, 185). All these dancers have their own pair of ballroom shoes, wearing rhinestone costumes and tail suits, and presents themselves very well. Some of the Silver class (Dance 280, 284, 285) members are still learning and not quite there, but a majority are great! I may possible be interested in looking for a ballroom boy. These men look amazing out on that dance floor. ;-) I also like to see the younger groups dance. We had a Junior High competition and I think it is a great idea to put kids into this program.

I do have to say, I think the screaming from groups off in the wing behind me will cause my deafness before the volume of the music does. I did need to keep the volume down because judges are going to be listening to it all day/all weekend. Oh the joys of DanceSport!

The last hour on my shift, I transferred over to the RB to run music for the Semi-Finals for Cabaret. At first, I couldn’t remember why I always loved Cabaret because it seemed to be based solely on how many lifts they can do. But as the dances progressed, I began to remember. These can become beautiful lyrical dances if they really work with choreography and music. It’s about internalizing it to have the best overall presentation.