Ok, I’m not one to be bitter about dance competitions, and i’ll try not to be, but I have to have a moan about this.

My performance group competed in the Westminster Dance Challenge this week against other community groups from the area. In their section there were three other groups. One a messy cheerleader routine, utilising the dreaded ‘Mickey’ song to throw their pom-poms, legs and skirts around, a badly danced excerpt from cats, and a contemporary piece from the youth group of a professional contemporary company who have recently lost state funding (I mention this because it might be relevant, who knows?).

My group had a tight hip hop routine that centered around the old skool theme, using old skool street dance techniques. They performed it excellently.

My heart dropped from the point at which the host talked about the four judges. They consisted of two musical theatre and contemporary trained judges, one street dance expert and one council member. Yep that’s right a Westminster council member NOT someone who has any expertise in dance AT ALL - (I know I said I wasn’t going to be bitter…)

The idea behind the scoring was that the groups get marked on various aspects of their performance and then get a total score. In theory this should be fair because different performances will have different strengths and weaknesses. I would say that my group did not have as fantastic costumes as the cats piece but surely the content should weight more? The dancers had very poor technique. The contemporary piece was good but hardly had any movement phrases in it, which made it quite boring. But still their technique was good.

The result was that the Contemporary piece came first, the Cats came second and we came third. I can understand the peice that came first but thrid for us, while cats came second? Ridiculous! I know that it is difficult to judge different styles against each other but thats why the correct exucution of the techinique for the style being danced should be important as well as the choreography. I don’t think it was fair scoring.

Still, it was a good attempt at having a platform for schools and community groups. I don’t think it should have been a competition though, if the judging isn’t transparent or if the actual judges themselves do not have the expertise or scope of different styles.

It was a good experience for my group though, and probably an accurate representation of what the dance industry is like! Apparently we now have to compete again in the finals, but I don’t see the point of those who came third competing again. First and second maybe but whats the point of third? Just give us some free seats so we can watch the show and cheer on the other groups.