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On 30/04/2011 11:04 AM, Orchid XP v8 wrote:
> Tomorrow I will be taking part in my first ever dance competition.
>
> I don't mind telling you, I've only had a month to prepair for this, I'm
> not really ready, and I have no idea what to expect.
Well, perhaps predictably, it was NOTHING LIKE what I was expecting. In
fact, I'm left with the feeling that the whole thing was a totally
pointless waste of my time. I very much doubt that I'll ever do that again.
Going in, I was excited and my partner was reluctant. Coming out, I have
no desire to ever repeat this experience. It's something I would rather
forget than celebrate.
So how did we do?
You know what? I DON'T KNOW.
Yes, you read that correctly. I spent an entire day at a dance
competition, and as I stand here now, I still don't actually know what
events I competed in, or what results I got. WTF, people. Given that I
don't know how well I did, there's no real sense of achievement (or
failure).
As best as I can tell, this is a 2-day event which this year is being
shoehorned into 1 day, presumably so the organisers can cheap out on
hiring the hall for two days. The result is that everything is a hecktic
rush. They just steamroller through event after event after event. Even
the organisers don't seem to be completely sure what's happening. They
actually *missed out* the final round of one of the events by mistake,
and had to insert it back in later. (By which time some of the
contestants had gone home, some of them had changed out of their
costumes, etc.) It was a shambles.
I was expecting there to be a contest, and some results. But with the
organisers steamrollering through an endless succession of events, it
makes each one seem tiny and insignificant. And with no idea of what's
happening, where you're supposed to be, or what that dance you just did
actually counts towards, nor even what the eventual outcome was, it's
very hard to care about how well you did. It all seems so hollow and
pointless.
We arrived before they said our event would start. We stood around for
many hours, and then we were called to dance, and for 90 seconds you're
supposed to be flat-out dancing your arse off. Then you go stand around
for another hour, and they unexpectedly called us to dance again.
Another 90 seconds where you're suddenly supposed to be in full flow.
Then we waited about an hour, and got called out and given a trophy,
we're not sure why. 2 hours later, we get called to dance again,
alongside some guys from our class who we know can dance rings around
us. 3 hours after that, they call our names, and some guy shakes our
hands and said "well done". We don't know why.
My best guess on what happened:
- In event #32, we danced through round one, and get into round two,
where we came last. Everybody who made it to round two got an identical
blank trophy, except the top 3. So we were bottom of the finalists, but
better than all the people who didn't get to the final [and hence didn't
get a trophy].
- Event #130 [yes, the numbers go up that high] was the qualifier for
the national finals at Blackpool in November. You enter to be in your
region's qualifier round, and everybody who entered dances around a bit.
The 10 best couples qualify and get to dance in Blackpool. This year, 6
couples entered [one of which was us]. Ergo, every single couple that
entered will have qualified, regardless of talent or abject lack of it.
My classmate's elated cries of "well done!" ring a little hollow when we
actually qualified "by default", as such.
So there you have it. Unless we change our minds, it looks like we're
going to dance in Blackpool, in the world-famous Empress Ballroom. Which
is literally the only reason I'm bothering at this point; so that in
years to come, I can say "I danced at Blackpool once". I don't expect us
to score highly, and I almost don't care. My only hope is that Blackpool
will be organised better than the shambolic chaos I witnessed today.
Epic failure.
--
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*
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