Closing the Showcase Book

This is the last chapter in the Showcase trilogy of posts. Might as well tie it up and put a bow on it.

Did have the conversation about the clustering of heats and it turns out I wasn’t the only one who wasn’t happy with it. PJ brought OwnerGuy over when he showed up so he could hear it from me as well. I think I was more angry than I though because I could kind of hear that in my voice.

As it turns out, it was a software thing where the goal was to put the more advanced dancers later in the day. There is a lot of sense to that. Some of the beginners don’t like having dancers get too close to them but it can be unavoidable when you are doing some of the more advanced patterns. Plus, the beginner couples may not be as familiar with line of dance and could clog things up unintentionally.

But there has to be a way to achieve that without simply pushing all the advanced dancers to the end. I did let everyone know that I would be scaling way back in future Showcases because I’m not going though that again. Was told they’d look into what the software can do.

Now we come to the part where I once again learn that my perceptions are far from reality. I truly believed my dancing was subpar and I fully expected that to be reflected in the critiques and comments. Well, not so much.

They have a new system so everything is done online at the event. The judges give you an overall rating reflecting the various levels (Bronze, Silver, Gold and Gold with Honors) and then add comments they feel are appropriate. I’m assuming that you aren’t going to be rated below your current level but if they feel or saw that your dancing was maybe a little better than the level you are in, then you could be pushed up a category. At least I think this is how it works. I don’t know for sure.

This system was used at the last mini event earlier this year. At that time, I got “Gold” for all my smooth dances and “Silver” for the majority of rhythm. Plus some Golds for the auxiliary dances. Made perfect sense to me as I’ve always felt my smooth dances were stronger. Had some feedback on the rhythm dances which we tried to work on heading into this Showcase.

I don’t have exact counts but I believe out of the 50 heats I did, 48 of them came back either “Gold” or “Gold Honors”. There were three judges up there and we generally got marks from two of them meaning it wasn’t just one person looking at you the entire time. The vast majority of comments were positive. If there was a theme, it was to do a better job holding the slows in certain dances.

Far, far better than I expected given how I felt. And maybe that shouldn’t be a shock given that I’ve always been my worst critic.

You kind of hope at some point that you’ll get over it but I guess getting worn down was just enough to let out the inner critic who thought nothing went well. Danced better than I thought although I would still say it was not a lot of fun given how tiring it was.