We had a very fun and successful weekend at Showstopper dance competition. It was held at the Foxwoods Casino. We've been competing at NEDA for 13 years and this was the very first time we have done Showstoppers. I'll be honest. It was definitely a love hate thing for me. My review is below in case anyone comes here to read about the competition and would appreciate some honest feedback.
All of Gianna's dances did great!! She looked amazing! I just can't get over how much she has improved! She's so versatile. She looks great doing every style of dance.
Senior Small Groups (Friday night):
1st place: Lacrimosa (Kara) - won a Crystal! My favorite routine!!
2nd place: Recovery (Courtney) - won a Double Platinum
Senior Large Groups (Saturday night):
1st place: Bond Girls (Jill's jazz) - won a Crystal!
2nd place: One last Breath (Hope) - won a Crystal!
5th place: The Ritz (Jill's tap) - won a Double Platinum
Teen Large Groups (Sunday):
10th place: RiRi (hip hop) - won a Double Platinum! They actually placed this time! They changed some of the choreography and cleaned it up a lot from the last competition. It was so so so much better!! And they moved Gianna from the sides to the center more so you could actually see her dancing. She has so much rhythm and looks fabulous doing hip hop!
Production (Sunday):
1st place: Who Can Stand (acro) - won a Crystal! This was Gianna's debut - hahaha! I saw some pretty big mistakes with falls and timing issues but you have to cut them some slack as it is so incredibly difficult and I know they must have been exhausted. It was the last routine for our studio after three very long days of dancing back to back routines. I was hoping for a clean video. Oh well. Maybe next competition.
2nd place: The Year of the Dragon - won a Crystal! I think it should have won first as it was super clean and just fantastic!
I can't wait for the videos and professional pictures to be ready!! I'll post them soon. I hardly took any pictures myself. It's different this year as Gianna gets ready by herself and she's always off on her own with her friends. She doesn't like me taking pictures of her anyway. Although she'll always ask for them later : \
Small Group awards from Friday:
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Here is my personal opinion of the Showstopper competition. Again it was a love hate thing for me.
First the love...
1. They booked a big venue. They made sure the competition rooms and the dressing rooms were very large. So nice!
2. They have beautiful background screens that change with every routine. It was stunning! The lighting was beautiful too.
3. They shoot great camera angles for the videos...not just from head on.
4. The trophies are beautiful, especially the crystal trophy. It comes in a box which is such a nice souvenir. And they give the kids medals instead of the tiny pins. We were just at the Imagine dance competition and they give out flags to the top routines. Yes. Cheap flags and tiny pins.
Now for the bad...
1. First and foremost the numbering of the routines was crazy. They did not go in order. They assign numbers to the routines as the studios enter the competition. So that made for a crazy program book.
2. Not only was the numbering of routines crazy, they didn't pay attention to the order they were dancing in. They had routines from the same studio with the same dancers back to back which is obviously not possible. So that caused for so much confusion as the routines were running completely out of order. In my 13 years of competition, I've never been to a competition that ran like that. Also it made if very frustrating for my family trying to watch the live stream. We didn't know what time the girls would be dancing as they were consistently skipping routines and moving them to a later time slot.
3. Speaking of the live stream, it was terrible. It kept going in and out. I will give the competition the benefit of the doubt and say it was probably the venue's issue. BUT I'm not so sure it was being monitored consistently by their competition staff. By the end of the day, it was completely off air which tells me someone just gave up on it.
4. And this was a big problem. They didn't have anyone working backstage to check in the dancers!! Like what was that about??? That made it terribly chaotic and confusing. They were literally leaving it up to the young dancers and the teachers to decide who was ready to dance. I guess there was a cell phone backstage that you used to let them know if you were ready to dance? Like what???
5. The music was oddly soft on the third day. That is so unusual for a dance competition so I will just assume there was an issue with the speakers?
6. And lastly, they only use two wings on their custom built stages. It was very distracting because you could see the dancers backstage the whole time.
