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Rearview Mirror
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Last Week's Note: "Soft vs. Hard Abstract"
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I'm impressed at how quickly everyone picked up the differences between Soft & Hard Abstract Improvisation. Wow. A little disturbing maybe, but you got it.
Now... Something I didn't mention last week was that BOTH video examples I used placed TOP 5 in SWING contests. One even placed FIRST! Why is this?
I demo and describe the reasons in my SwingIN!s much better. It's hard to do it here. But I'll do my best with one of the biggest reasons...
The judges are being fooled. Abstract moves SO much more than swing does... that should be a red flag for a judge, but unfortunately, they usually end up "not seeing" the real swing dancers on the floor. WCS movements are much tighter, much more subtle. They require you to actually take time to look at them, and that's hard to do in a sea of wide and huge movements.
CASE IN POINT In early 2008 I watched a Novice competition with 90 couples. The event director had the judges cut it down to 10 finalists (crazy and unfair in it's own right, but it makes money, doesn't it?) and so the judges had to watch a huge division and quickly choose only a few.
I watched prelims and I watched finals. All 10 finalist men were doing 4 count "push-pulls" instead of push-breaks. Why? There were plenty of guys out there in prelims doing great 6 count push breaks. But they were hard to find. More movement occurs in a 4 count "push-pull" than in a 6 count "push break." And with 90 couples on the floor....
A sign of bad judging? Of course. The judges being used were not only working for free, but half of them had never competed in a swing contest, and the other half had never even reached Intermediate.
NOTE: I'm a huge fan of using the BEST judges in Novice, because our new dancers watch who makes finals and change their dancing accordingly... it's part of the reason, I believe, we're burning through new dancers in only a year nowadays- they simply can't figure out what dance those finalists are doing... because it's not what they are learning in class...
Anyhow... this event was in 2008. A sign of what was to come? Exactly. When I saw that, I immediately stopped telling my students to compete there. Good leading, good following, good posture, good Timing, Technique and Teamwork were obviously no longer valued.
Is this happening everywhere? Much more than any of you would feel comfortable believing. It's worldwide. But it's not too late. As a judge, I now simply look out on the floor to see 1) Who is doing West Coast Swing and 2) Who is keeping a beat. They are easy to find. They are dancing in a nicely confined slot. I look for the controlled and small movements... and then I see swing. Right there, I can easily eliminate the majority of the dancers depending on where I'm judging.
It's time to save the dance. It's time to take judging seriously again. It's time to hire real judges again. And it's time to ask our judges why they no longer put swing above Abstract, when we are awarding Swing points and saying it's a Swing contest.
We need credibility again, folks. If our better dancers are tired of doing push breaks and underarm turns, then I would kindly invite them to enjoy another dance... and stop ruining ours.
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"Swing is Swing."
