Last week, I was in an informal competition. Informal, to me, would have been meant the format and rules were not as strict as a formal one. Okay, the organizer told me that it's 'whatever you want' but needed to 'look like c____ (the type of dance)'. Okay, then when I asked who the judges would be and what would they look for in the dance, a club manager, a wingchun studio manager, two c____ instructors. Well, that wasn't much information and still I didn't know how should the dance be. Later, a general description was sent to all saying that 'connection, technique, style, musicality, innovation' would be graded.
Then my partner and devised a routine that looked really like it as it was all about adapting moves and fitting them in the dance, and devising variations based on beginner moves, since difficulty of moves would not be counted. I worked mostly on footwork and style, as I had too little control on doing lifts and drops (though I reminded the partner the timing a lot). On the last rehearsal, I still wanted to convince him to adapt a more complicated kind of footwork, but... he said he quite liked the simplicity of the SS. And his SO had an opinion that we were going too sexy, so we had to make other changes. Anyway...
The day before the competition, I got an email from the organizer telling me that the replacement of judges, two guest judges still remained but the two dance instructors of this particular dance would be replaced by just one dancer of another dance?! This was completely ridiculous. And my partner and I would go first, which means when the judges still had no idea about anything they would judge us. This was so FAIR.
Did I mention that there were two rounds? That the first round was to pack some twenty people on a 300 sq feet floor, in the dime light and rotate the ladies, while the judges needed to stay in the dark corner and grade the dancers. I doubted how could the they see me, as I started at the farthest corner and never had a chance to be rotated to the front of their eyes.
And, in this round 'Best Beginner', 'Best Intermediate' and 'Best Advanced' were be produced. The question to me was, I hadn't known that I was classed into the advanced group until the end of the competition when the result was announced. Well, I am an advanced dancer in another category, but I wouldn't say I am an advanced dancer in this category. Just like a good hip hop dancer shouldn't be expected as a good ballroom dancer. But there you go, I was competing against the top ones, and I was just thinking like how FAIR it was to me.
Our routine gained us the 2nd runner up. But that was not what I expected. Our routine was designed for the judges who know dancing. I have never heard of any competition that was adjudicated by non-professional judges ONLY (oh yes, one of them is a dancer, but, I won't approve a ballet professional to judge belly dance, how can a SS instructor judge me?).
Right after the competition, early next morning, the organizer sent me this: Going first was a hard task and to be fair to you, I didn't know the judges would take so much warming up! I see afterwards that your score would have been higher if you had been placed later. We would defintely change up the couples' orders for next year. I popped you first because I knew you would set the bar high which you did! You showed the judges that we had some STAR dancers. Yes, and now a nice shot of our dance and a video clip of part of our dance (but they missed the finest part) are now on their facebook, but I don't feel it a pleasure.
This has been really a good experience for me. One major thing I have learnt: if I want to survive, it is mostly about how I handle the unjust. My one major principle has always been never say no to money, never say no to job. Even though quite a number of people came and told me that the result didn't quite reflect my true potential, that won't change anything now. So I am going to take it easy, and think it positively, this event doesn't really hurt my credential- I just need to remind myself that I shall never entre any competitions which are not recognized by the council or entre anything unofficial / informal so as to ensure I am having a fair judge.