#tdabestdancer

[emmadance555]

Why are there so many Club kids standing on the TDA Orlando stage competing for best dancer after having just done a full studio Nationals at TDA Vegas...

Obviously we all know the answer to this - less entries, they all want a title, etc etc. But that doesn't make it ok or justifiable. It's problematic for two main reasons really:

Fairness in competition

After @p21jazzqueens post yesterday I said: "I have a feeling Krista did the math a few years ago, hence the competing with the studio in Vegas and then randomly attending Orlando to go for Best Dancer 🤷‍♀️". Sure, there are probably kids from other studios here and there who have done the same this year as well as in the past. But there are just way too many from Club Dance here - it just looks so dirty and sneaky which kind of makes the whole studio atmosphere look bad … what is that teaching the kid? I can't think of a positive learning lesson there - the only take away is: "we don't have enough faith in you to lay the card out and see if you win here, winning is too important to take that risk, so we are going to pick and choose to increase your chances of winning. Because that is what matters."

2. Increasing the risk of burnout

Putting a young child through an additional very very very tolling and expensive week of high-stakes competing may indeed be positive at the time: more nationals may = more great learning experiences, etc. But no kid is superhuman. We all watched and witnessed the 'Maddie Ziegler Trajectory': she was talented and passionate, she danced on and on non-stop with a mountain of pressure on her back. Maddie was exploited and made to dance more and more, over and over, and the frequency increased. And now? That young little Maddie (from her first interview on Dance Moms at 8 through to her pre-teen years) who said dance was her absolute livelihood, who spoke of all of her aspirations - of dancing on broadway, of being a Rockette, of a dance career. Maddie probably still absolutely loves dance but she is far too permanently burnt out and traumatised from it that she walked away from the dance industry in her teens and I think its safe to say there is no way in hell she is ever going to have a dance career, or ever want to have one now. In the end, something has got to give and burnout is not avoidable, even if it only comes years later. We all speak admirably of the Szyndlars but in the back of a lot of people's minds is naturally a concern about "how on earth are these kids going to keep going on handling all that?".

[emmadance555]

"When you hear the music, your improv has begun": Why is there no 5-10 second grace period in the improv round?

TDA and Radix Nationals all approaching, and year after year I find myself still trying to make sense of that opening statement we hear each year. Does anyone else feel like whoever the dancer on the far left is gets stitched up so badly?

The whole point of the improv round is to see how well the dancers can improvise and connect to new music as opposed to performing choreography they've learnt and gone over numerous times. So with that logic in mind, how on earth do the conveners at TDA and Radix expect the unlucky kid who has to go first to start dancing as the music starts playing and somehow find their rhythm with it. Like the song has barely started and they're expected to somehow dance in time with the music before hearing a single lyric?!

To this day, it still makes no sense to me. All I hear is:

"Ok, [insert name of sacrificial lamb, the unlucky kid on the far left, I know you haven't heard shit yet, let alone had time to grasp any sort of rhythm or 'vibe' of this song, but] once you hear the music your improv has begun!"

Why don't they wait literally just like 10 seconds, allow all the dancers on the stage take in just a tiny bit of the song, and then have the (un)Lucky #1 start improving?? Going first at the very start of an unknown song is just nuts to me...