Formation Teams for Competition

A letter from listmember Stephen Gonzales, who attended some collegiate competitions early this year and was concerned about syllabus competitors dancing out of category and about the formation team events.

“One school … [danced] a routine that had the International Latin dances and was artistic in the fashion of partner dancing and changing of partners throughout the routine and the showing of proper technique. The choreography was awesome and had some very difficult instances but the dancers showed what they could do and completed their respective moves. The other school … had a routine that was so flashy … it seemed like a college cheerleading routine. There was no dancing with partners, if so very very little, hardly any technique for indicating the knowledge of dance steps. In the end [the second school] won first place. I was very disappointed in the way the judges scored this competition … What happened to the artistic form of dancing?”

Tom Hicks, who has participated in, coached, and judged formation events, says:

“As a member of many teams, I have learned that individual dancing or partnering is not the top priority in creating a successful performance. The top priority is the unity of getting 4-8 couples to look as one unit and then to have them blend effortlessly from one formation to the next.

"My criteria of judging is reflected from this past experience. First, how well does a team look as one unit? Second, how many formation changes were made and what was the quality of the changes. Third, did the team stay in lines. If these do not distinguish a placement and the teams were equal in criteria then I would use the following to decide a placement. Dancing skills of the individual dancers, level of difficulty of choreography and formational changes, and performance theme.”

Nathan Burroughs, a past collegiate team member, says:

“From my experience the formations are judged more upon the synchronicity in execution, and complexity in floor pattern changes, and THEN by flashyness of movement. A slow, sensual rhumba formation, kept in perfect time with the other members and expressively with the music, with good use of couple arrangement and formation changes, has every much as good a chance against a fast and furious jive with lifts flips dips and other insanities.

"Just from my competition experience in general, I find judges do like to see the attempt at varied choreography, but that by itself isn't enough to win without good control of fundamentals: timing, posture, weighting, balance, shaping, connection, etc. An aida is a simple silver step, but done well, it carries a lot more weight with judges than the gold level heel-toe swivels if they are just executed as foot patterns without the technique to back them up.”

The rulebook does not specifically address the niceties of technique in partnering versus formation flow choreography. However, it does say:

“Youth and Adult formation teams shall be allowed twenty-four bars of solo work during their routine proper. Solo work shall not exceed eight bars for any one dance."

[Formations may be a combination of dances in either smooth/standard or rhythm/latin style, with a total maximum time of six minutes including entry and exit from the floor.]

“Solo (Open) work is defined as when any couple in the formation team has less than two points of contact between the two partners. Even though a couple may not be in a traditional closed hold, they will be considered to be in “closed” position if there are at least two points of contact between the two partners.

"Every team shall have at least 50% of their bars in the routine proper danced in the traditional competitive ballroom hold.”

If the formation choreography observed by Stephen did indeed have less than 50% of the routine in closed position, then it would seem there might be a question with the judging. However, as noted above, a great many other elements come into play. If, for example, the first team had good partner work but had more choreography in which the couples were merely synchronized, rather than changing their shapes and lines on the floor, the solo/closed ratio may not have ranked as highly in the judging criteria.

As to who does the judging: it’s important for amateur dancers to bear in mind that judges at amateur events typically receive fees that come nowhere close to covering their costs (in immediate expenses and in lost teaching time) to attend the competition. In many cases, judges waive even these small fees. In other words, judges are volunteers and we owe them our thanks.

This is one reason you may see the same group of judges at many competitions in a given area. Competition organizers and the judges themselves make an effort to ensure that instructors are not on the judging panel for events in which their own students are dancing, but this is not always possible. The honor system is in place and I believe, after many years’ attendance at amateur competitions, that it works very well.

That said, it is certainly to a competitor’s advantage to be a familiar face. The more you are seen on the dance floor, the more likely it is that a judge’s eyes will turn to you first. If you are not dancing well, however, those eyes will roll right on to the next couple – so practice!