Post Showcase Haze

There is always something about the day after a Showcase that puts me in a sort of hazy state. My heats were actually nicely spaced out so I didn’t get overly worn down but I think it is just the amount of activity over the day and trying to be “on” while on the floor. Overall, I think it was a solid day. I was happy with the way most of the heats went and the two solos went very well.

There are pros and cons to doing this event with the hotel stay involved. Believe it or not, it does give you more time in the morning since you don’t have to travel to the ballroom. Typically, for events here, I have to allow 20-30 minutes to get there and to park and all that fun stuff. Since I ended up staying over last night, another nice thing was actually being able to go back to the room to clean up a bit and change for dinner.

But hotels aren’t what they used to be and you are sleeping in a strange bed which is always a bit of an adjustment for me. Plus, there was this party of younger folks who must have been excited to be away since they were loud and making noise on and off until 2:30 in the morning. Funny thing is that they were across the hall from me but the sound carried. So I didn’t get much sleep the night before and I started to feel it in the late afternoon.

Memo to self – need to get some kind of white noise generator for things like this. I’m a fairly light sleeper so noises tend to wake me up and you can’t guarantee quiet at a hotel these days.

They really ran this thing like clockwork. You had to get on and off the floor quickly for the heats because they left very little time between dances. No checking of the floor to see if everyone was there. Just announce the next heat and then start the music soon after. I’ve heard that a lot of these venues you can only book for a certain number of hours and they charge extra if you go over. Even in an event like this which ran until roughly 9PM so that nobody would be using it after us.

Running long is always a problem at Showcase. Sometimes it is because an instructor has multiple students and they all want to dance with their instructor and an instructor can’t be on the floor with multiple students. They do limit how many heats an instructor can do to help with this but I’m not sure they’ve got the right balance.

The downside to the relentless push to hold the schedule is that they really started to cut the heats short during the rhythm rounds later in the day. I know this because we weren’t getting through some of our patterns before the music got faded out. They did have four judges so, hopefully, they got eyes on everyone but I feel like some of the afternoon critiques may be a little brief.

They also didn’t leave a lot of times for costume changes and that bit us once during the event. PJ was doing a hustle routine with her pro partner during the last set of solos and they were the last to go on. We were scheduled for a Rumba heat with only one heat (about a minute and half) for her to change. Sometimes, they do a general dance or two to allow time but not yesterday. She made it near the end so we did a little rumba but it wasn’t great.

I appreciate them keeping the show mostly on schedule (we ended about 15 minutes after the scheduled end time) because it then meant dinner stayed on time. But it did make parts of the event feel rushed and that’s not great either.

Even with that, it was still a fun day. It always is. Just need a day to recover and let the haze clear.