CDC Comments

The Charlotte DanceSport Challenge was held last weekend (March 23-24, 2007). The competition was a great success. As a first year competition held in North Carolina, the turnout of 170 competitors was fantastic. The competition started off Friday night with a group lesson, a social dance, a show, and a mini-match. The group lesson and show were given by Robertas Maleckis and Inga Sirkaite out of Durham, NC. I thoroughly enjoyed their demonstration and lesson, and I got the feeling that most people shared that sentiment. For the mini-match, several social style dances like west coast swing, hustle, and salsa were danced and judged like fun events with judges tapping people into the next round until a final was reached. Unfortunately, the dancers in the final didn't have numbers, so the judges (myself included) had to rank the dancers according to what the ladies were wearing.... for example, "green shirt", "brown and white dress", "slinky black", "black with red trim", "black with shiny stuff". That made determining the final results interesting. Competition on Saturday was very good. As a whole, the level of dancing in this area gets higher and higher every year. Making it even better, Charlotte DanceSport raised enough money to offer a scholarship for every event up through Novice level.

Good things:

• mini buffet-style catering for social dance on Friday evening
  
• Competition was run very well for a first year comp
• Scholarships were fantastic and will definitely help to encourage our future stars
• Ballroom looked very nice
• Lots of competition in newcomer through silver levels
• USA Dance style registration allowed dancers to compete in several more events giving them more floor experience

Things that could be improved on next year:

• The ballroom became excessively hot at times
• Ran out of water and cups
• Transitions from one event to the next were slower than usual (can be alleviated by more streamlined front desk operation, a more organized on deck area, and possibly a speaker and/or call back sheet in the on deck area)
• Due to the announcement of scholarships being offered primarily in the newcomer and bronze events, many dancers danced down to have a better chance of collecting a check (this problem should really be handled by team captains and not competition organizers)
• Floor was a little small for Smooth and Standard

If you have videos or pictures from this event posted somewhere on internet, please leave a comment to this post with a link to where we can find them.

Congratulations to everyone that participated in this year's CDC!