Spirit of Competition
Although the highest scoring dancers are ranked according to their overall scores, dance schools and competition production companies emphasize that dancers are primarily competing against themselves, and thus competitive dance is not so much about competing, but rather is an opportunity to:
- Receive valuable critiques from dance professionals. Competition companies provide original judges' scoresheets and critiques and, in some cases, audio recordings of judges' comments to dancers, to help them improve their technique and routines.
- Watch and learn from other dancers. Dance schools often instruct their dancer to spend their free time watching other routines.
Dancers are expected to conform to proper etiquette at competitions. They are expected to be courteous to each other, to applaud other routines, to not enter or exit the auditorium during a performance, etc. Aside from these standard rules of etiquette, many competition companies impose additional rules. For example, American Dance Awards requires all dancers to say "thank-you" when presented with an award.
Read more about this topic: Competitive Dance
Famous quotes containing the words spirit of, spirit and/or competition:
“The spirit of God, like the sun, always gives all its light at once. The spirit of man resembles the pale moon, which has its phases, its absences and its returns, its lucidity and its spots, its fullness and its disappearance, which borrows all its light from the rays of the sun, and which still dares to intercept them on occasion.”
—Victor Hugo (1802–1885)
“Calm fell. From Heaven distilled a clemency;
There was peace on earth, and silence in the sky;
Some could, some could not, shake off misery:
The Sinister Spirit sneered: ‘It had to be!’
And again the Spirit of Pity whispered, ‘Why?’”
—Thomas Hardy (1840–1928)
“Never before has a generation of parents faced such awesome competition with the mass media for their children’s attention. While parents tout the virtues of premarital virginity, drug-free living, nonviolent resolution of social conflict, or character over physical appearance, their values are daily challenged by television soaps, rock music lyrics, tabloid headlines, and movie scenes extolling the importance of physical appearance and conformity.”
—Marianne E. Neifert (20th century)