EPT
It has been long since I wrote something here. There was not much to talk about. But a few days ago I finally got time to read Ponytales #7 and saw all those amazing blog posts! So I thought I bring you some nice information about something game-unspecific too! And because just a few weeks back I took my hobby to the next level (or actually the first level ... we get to that), I actually have a topic I could talk about; so here it goes!
It's waaaaaay back, when I joined TL.net and during this time, the TL-manpower was still going on. I was greeted with a grin, when I PMed Starparty with the information that I'm doing Ballroom Dancing!
I have no problem combining being an oldschool metalhead, gaming geek and a dancer, but I think here on TL my hobby is still quite rare! And from those that dance I'm even in the more "elite" group of not just being a dancer but I do competitive dancing/Dancesport! And because most of you don't know anything about that, I wanted to tell you a little bit about it!
While there are many different dance styles out there, I will focus on the "classic" Ballroom/Latin pair dance! But there are much more dances where you can go to tourneys! If you want I can get some information together, but because I'm not doing formations, Jazz and so on, I'm not into this area quite well. But I did Ballroom and at the moment I'm Latin! And I'm doing it here in Germany, so there may be some variations to other contries, but you will get the main idea. So back to this:
It's also called the "10 dances", because Ballroom and Latin both are combining 5 dance styles each.
Ballroom: (Slow) Waltz, Tango, (Slow) Foxtrott, Quickstep and Viennese Waltz
Latin: Cha-cha-cha, Rumba, Samba, Jive, Paso Doble
A year back or so the German Dancesport Federation (DTV, Deutscher Tanzsportverband) added the "+ Tourneys". Here you get a sixth dance for the competition. Ballroom adds Discofox, Latin adds Salsa. Don't know if some international Federations added them too, but I'm not there
Also you don't start out dancing all those dances at a competition. There are different classes or leagues and as you rise up you have to learn and know more. The classes are defined as D (Ballroom: Slow Waltz, Tango Quickstep; Latin: ChaChaCha, Rumba, Jive), C (Ballroom adds Slowfox; Latin adds Samba), B (all styles have to be danced from now on), A and S. After that you have to go "professional" so basically living just from dancing. D-S is "amateur", meaning its still a hobby for us! Even if that means sometimes training 3-4 times a week even on my low D-rank! It IS a sport after all!
Well maybe you are dancing for fun or did a dancing course when you were 14y old or so. So you know how most of these dances work. The question arises: What exactly is different to competitive dancing?
It's quite difficult to understand, but I will try to explain:
(I will be talking about Latin most of the time now, but most of it can be transfered directly or with minor changes to Ballroom)
Basically every dancing step has a right way to do it. It's not about where you put your foot (well sometimes it is...
) but how you put it there! i.e. knees straight, movement of the leg as close to the other leg as possible, foot raised to the tip, hips still moving on if you don't have a step and much more you don't understand what I'm talking about if you never experienced training for Dancesport Maybe a little better to understand is the overall posture of your body: You have to stand upright, shoulders down, "every" muscle in your body has to be concentrated on and as a man you have to "ooze", that you are the king of the world
The last maybe sounds "crazy" but is very important. You can't go on a dance floor for a Latin Tourney thinking "weak", this is already a minus point for you and your partner!
The Jury at Tourneys are trained to see these little details (hopefully
) and decide who is the best. In high-end Dancesport most of the dancers are so skilled there is not much difference in this, so it gets complicated: Normally you learn a fixed set of figures you dance, so that you can concentrate on all those little things. But now you also have to "feel" the music and use the different music elements in the song for posing or speeding up things and so on. It's really difficult and in the end differs the winner from the loser So much for now, it's already a long read
But maybe I got you interested a little bit!Well you maybe have seen some 10y olds dancing already 2y and doing incredible stuff and you think "damn I'm too old for this crap!" ... wrong! I started non-competitive dancing all together when I was 23y old! I switched to competitive dancing nearly immediately and yeah, my best times are probably over, but I still managed to go to my first tourney a few weeks back - now finally cycling back to the first paragraph and explaining the "next level"!
I admit we were a bit disappointed with the outcome... we were one of 9 pairs and only got the 8 place!
We then decided to enter not only the Latin competition (we were already out) but also the Latin+ with Salsa. Here we got 4 of 4 but also some fun facts: We are dancing Salsa only for fun! We never trained it for a competition! I mentioned that normally you have a fix set of figures to dance - not so in Salsa, I improvised the whole tournament! And hell, the jury gave us the best marks for exactly this dance! Don't know if this is telling us something
But the next two tourneys are planned and we are sure to get better until then!Also an important thing we got with this 4 place: Our very first record:
![[image loading]](http://www.geisterkarle.net/galerien/galerie/news/turnier_2012_1.JPG)
see you on the dance floor!
