Dancemums

This resonates so much with my family. Our DD in Year 13 is doing A levels to give her something to fall back on if anything happens: injuries are an ever-present risk and the industry can be extremely tough at the best of times. She has been doing MT summer schools at the colleges she is interested in applying for, plus associate schemes, intensives and special events. These activities, combined with her dance school classes and singing lessons, are manageable alongside her school life and, to be honest, I think not being totally immersed in performance all the time and having friends who don't sing/dance has been really good for her. Helps keep everything in perspective!

I can only echo everything said above. There were so many issues, not least the venue. It was obvious that the venue and its staff were geared up towards rock gigs, not dance competitions. The initial ban on bringing food and drink into the venue just underlined this - how could dancers who are there from early in the morning to late in the evening cope without these? The venue only offered bar snacks and didn't have a water fountain - totally inadequate. The staff seemed to relax as the week went on in terms of food and drink, but understandably the security measures were ramped up. Nowhere for people to sit down between sections - no cafeteria or communal area - meant that you often had no choice but to stand outside in an enclosure that felt like being in a zoo! The second stage was laughable - not suitable for most solos let alone small groups! How this was deemed to be acceptable for the national finals is totally beyond me. We missed so much as there were clashes and our stress levels were through the roof as we were trying to run from one theatre to another to see our kids. Totally unacceptable when we've paid a lot of money for tickets. The changing areas were absolutely rammed on the first day - so much so that it was a safeguarding issue. Things improved from the second day but only by allowing groups in at certain times. Perhaps scheduling back to back group sections wasn't such a great idea. The list of adjudicators did bring some hope - plenty of specialists in particular genres - but then they weren't present when those genres were being judged - such a shame for the dancers who would have welcomed that focused feedback. And it was obvious that one of the AED adjudicators who seemed to be judging many of the sections knew some of the competitors personally - big hugs and kisses when they got medals! Impartial?!!! The new marking system was also questionable - far too easy for the results to be skewed by one judge and the typical lack of AED transparency. This might explain why some of the results were hard to fathom. Perhaps they could take note of the Dance World Cup marking system which looks at a set of criteria and the performance is marked accordingly. I agree about the point about including dancers in full time vocational training - hardly a level playing field. AED were trying to get money out of their supporters all the way through the Regionals and Finals - it's clear their plans to expand the scale of the competition are proving to be costly, but they have to realise that bigger isn't necessarily better. Both the Regionals and Finals are more like an endurance test. They are losing sight of what made the AED competition unique and I fear this is going to come back and bite them when their supporters who have been there year after year might decide that the negative experience outweighs the positive. Some schools would rather do Greek and National (yes, National not Global!!!) instead of acro and street, and you'd hope that AED would help keep these genres alive as part of their reason for existing in the first place. Sadly, I think money is the driving factor now. Even if our school decides to do it again, we are thinking that we might not and we've never felt that in the past. I'm sure we're not the only ones.