Shuffle Projects

Swinging Projects for Lindy Hop & Balboa Dancers

Competition

Swing Dance Competition: Jack & Jill

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Last weekend, Stir It! 2011 was happening here in Zurich Switzerland and I was in charge for the Jack & Jill (J&J) competition, which we organized for the third time this year.

Many attendees at the weekend started swing dancing just recently and never have heard about Jack & Jill competitions before. I also got asked quite often, why to enter such a competition at all.

So, I thought why not writing a post about this topic, in the hope that next year, there will be no doubt about signing up.

You have to know, that Swiss people usually are rather non-competitive (it's in our genes) so you need some soft pressure to have them participating in a contest! 🙂

Swing Dance Competition: Jack and Jill | Shuffle Projects

What Is A Jack & Jill Competition

The concept and the name of Jack & Jill competitions were created and introduced in the early 1950s by Jack Carey in Norwalk, Southern California.

Dancers of all levels are encouraged to enter a J&J competition.

The focus is on social dancing and improvisation. Leaders and followers are randomly matched and they dance to music they don't know before.

So, J&J contests are first of all about having fun on the dance floor while spontaneously dancing with a variety partners. A good portion of luck is required to win a J&J competition!

J&J competitions are very popular in the Swing dance world and most of the international Swing dance events offer at least a J&J competition nowadays.

How Does It Work

There are different ways to run a Jack & Jill contest, especially for the finals there are many format variations existing.

First, let's have a look at a typical setup:

  • Leaders and followers sign up separately for the competition, before or at the event. Depending on the organizers, you either have to pay an entry fee (especially when there are money prizes for the winners) or it's free.

Swing Dance Competition: J&J | Shuffle Projects

Preliminary rounds and if required semi-finals

One or several heats (groups of competitors) are possible

  1. Individual followers and leader are called out and lining up in two opposed lines facing each other.
  2. A random number will be drawn by a dice (nowadays iPhone App :)) or by somebody from the audience and (mostly) the followers are moving down the line the chosen number. So for example four is the number, then the followers are moving down four leaders. The new opposed leader is now the first dance partner in the competition.
  3. The randomly matched couples dance for 90-120 seconds to DJ music or to a band.
  4. The procedure of 2. and 3. will be repeated with varying tempos and styles. Quite common are three songs per heat, sometimes extra songs are required by the judges.
  5. Leaders and followers are judged individually. Judges are determine the dancers for the (semi-) finals by checking “yes” or “maybe” on the score sheet. At this point, no rankings are made.

Swing Dance Competition: Jack & Jill | Shuffle Projects

Finals

As a wrote before, there are different ways to run the finals. Here are some possibilities:

  • The followers draw the name of their partner out of a hat. The chosen partner is the competition partner for the finals. They will be judged and ranked as a couple.
  • Real Jack & Jill: Let's say there are five followers and five leaders in the finals. Every follower has to dance with every leader, the dancers will be judged and ranked individually.a
  • Real Jack & Jill, but without judges, the finalists rank themselves! I learned about this system the first time in Eauze last summer and we adapted it and used it at Stir It! as well. Here is how it goes. Every follower has to dance with every leader. After the five songs are finished, the followers and leaders rank each other individually. Interesting about this concept is, that the final result is often differing from the audience expectation.

Spotlight Format

In the finals, where the dancers are judged as couples, the spotlight format is very common. That means, after an all-skate round (all the couples are dancing at the same time on the dancefloor), every couple dances individually in front of the audience and the judges. So the spotlight is for 90 seconds on one single couple. After the spotlights there is another all-skate round.

Invitational Jack & Jill

This is also a special form of a Jack & Jill competition. It is designed for high level dancers such as international instructors, so that they are not competing in the regular categories.

As its name implies, the competitors are invited by the organizers. The dance couples are also drawn randomly and they dance in the spotlight format. While one couple dance the spotlight, all the other dancers are sitting in the back and are judging. So, they are judging each other.

Here is an example from ILHC 2011:

Ranking

Normally, the Relative Placement Scoring System will be used to determine the rankings.

Bottom Line

I hope, I could give you an insight in a Jack & Jill competition. Now it's up to you to take the advantage and to enter the next J&J contest. Don't forget, J&J contests shouldn't be taken too seriously… HAVE FUN!

Pictures (video stills) by Stefan Deuber from Stir It! 2011 in Zurich

Swing Dance Competition: Relative Placement Scoring System

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Relative Placement Scoring System in Swing Dance Competitions | Shuffle Projects

Have you ever wondered how Swing dance competitions are scored?

Here is the answer. In this post I would like to explain you a widely accepted scoring system in the Swing dance world called Relative Placement.

What is Relative Placement

Relative Placement is a scoring system which provides a fair method to value each judge's subjective vote.  It makes sure that every judge has an equal vote on the end result, no judge has more power than the other one.

Consequently, one high or low judge is disregarded and favoritism or bias from a judge is avoided.

How does Relative Placement work

Judges

A minimum of five judges are required. Also possible are six, seven, eight or nine.

In the preliminary and semi-final round an even or odd number of judges may be used: five, six, seven, eight or nine. In Jack & Jill competitions, one half of the judges may judge leaders, the other half followers.

A final round of a competition must be judged by an odd number of judges: at least five, recommended seven, preferred nine.

Preliminary Round, Semi-Finals, Finals

In the preliminary round and if needed in the semi-finals, the competitors (single, couple or group) are not ranked in a specific order, a call-back system is used instead.

The judges select competitors for the next round (basically yes or no) and determine alternates.

The scorer (which in most cases is the head judge) transforms the selections in ordinals: 1 for the selected competitors, 2 for alternates and 3 for the unselected. According to the total number of received 1s, 2s and 3s the competitors get ranked.

The head judge determines how many competitors are promoted for the next round. There are two possibilities:

  • prefixed number of semi-finalists or finalists
  • considering the natural break in the ranking (often it occurs, that the first group of ranked competitors are close together before there is a break to the second group with the rest of the ranked competitors)

Final Placements

In the finals all the competitors (usually couple or group) get placed by the judges by defining a rank: 1st place, 2nd place, 3rd place, etc. while duplicate placements are not allowed.

For the final placement a majority is needed. If no competitor has a majority of the same placement, the next placement is added to the previous placements until a majority is reached:

  • 1st and 2nd place (= 1-2)
  • 1st, 2nd and 3rd place (= 1-3)
  • etc.

If two or more competitors have an equal majority, the numerical value of the ordinals for each competitor is added. The competitor with the lower sum get ranked higher. If the sums for two and more competitors are equal, the next placement is added to the previous placements.

Let's take a look at two examples

Examples of Relative Placement

Example 1:

Relative Placement Scoring System Example 1 | Shuffle Projects

In this example, the result is clear through all competitors. The majority of votes with five judges is three.

  • Although judge 2 placed competitor #1 fifth, the majority of three judges placed them first, so the final place is first as well
  • Competitor #2 got one first place and two second place votes. Therefore 1-1 is 1 and 1-2 (1st plus 2nd) is 3.
  • Competitor #3 got no first place, one second place and four third place votes: 1-1 is 0, 1-2 is 1 and 1-3 is five (1st plus 2nd plus 3rd)
  • etc.

Example 2:

Relative Placement Scoring System Example 2 | Shuffle Projects

In this example we have a more complicated situation. The majority of votes is still three.

  • For competitor #1 the result is clear, the majority of judges voted them first.
  • Competitor #2 and #3 reached both the majority of three for 2nd place. Now we take the sum of the ordinals: 1+2+2=5 (written in brackets) for both competitors, we have an equal situation. Then the same procedure will be repeatet until a majority is reached. In this example the difference is eventually at 1-5.
  • Competitor #4 has more votes for 1-3 than #2 and #3, but less for 1-2, so the final place is 4.

Complete Rules

If you are interested in the complete rules, then check out Relative Placement Scoring System Rules – Compiled by Gary Kuhn. From the same website I have taken the two example cases.

Photo credit dices: plrang

What about you, do you like Relative Placement? Please leave a comment!

Related posts:

Competing at ABW and ESDC

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Until two years ago I didn't compete at all, in fact I considered it silly and unnecessary. But this is a story I will tell you another time.

Within one week I was competing four times in Balboa, two times at All Balboa Weekend (ABW) in Cleveland OH, USA and two times at the European Swing Dance Championships (ESDC) in Barcelona, Spain. The latter were held for the first time this year.

All Balboa WeekendAll Balboa Weekend

It was my second time at ABW after 2009 and it's a killer. Only Balboa, all day and all night – this is Balboa heaven for sure!

The camp will be releasing an official DVD, therefore there is not much footage online so far.

Final All Skate of the Amateur Jack & Jill

This is the only clip available about the Amateur Jack & Jill competition.

I knew, this will be my last time in an Amateur Jack & Jill and my goal was to make it to the finals, secretly I hoped to reach a top 3 position. Well, after the finals, I was not very happy with my performance and I had no expectations at all anymore. Anyway Mimi Liu and I we've won this competition :-). As Olivier Harouard mentioned after the competition: “Holiday is over now, welcome to the adults world!”

Amateur Strictly with Nina Galicheva

Unfortunately, there are no clips online from this competition.
Nina and I are not regular dance partners, we've met at The Balboa Experiment where we decided to compete together at ABW. Our goal was to make it to the finals and to win a top position. We really had good dances throughout the competition and also the spotlight dance in the finals went very well. Result: 4th place.

European Swing Dance ChampionshipsEuropean Swing Dance Championships

Last year, when I heard the first time about this event it was clear to me that I want to compete with my regular dance partner Marcia Bodenmann and luckily she agreed. In Barcelona, there were “only” two Balboa competitions: Jack & Jill and strictly.

Jack & Jill Prelims

Because there were not as many leaders as followers, I had to dance in both heats, but I was judged only in the first one. It was a little bit the same like in Cleveland, I didn't feel very confident and just hoped, it will be good enough.

Jack & Jill Finals

Marcia and I made it to the finals! I was very excited about it and of course quite nervous, dancing with so many awesome dancers together in the ESDC finals.

The finals happened one day after the prelims. I have to admit, these were my toughest three dances in a competition so far. With Lana Mykhaylyuk, I've got a highly talented dance partner, everybody was looking at us and I knew it will be on YouTube just a few hours later. I just wanted to do a good job. It didn't work as good as I wanted but on the clip it doesn't look as bad as I felt. Result: 5th place.

Strictly Prelims with Marcia Bodenmann

This was our third competition together and our goal was to have great dances and FUN. We didn't make it to the finals but we are very happy about our performance! And we know there is still much more potential.

Bottom Line

Competing is so much inspiring! It helps you to have a goal and be more disciplined and focused with practising, especially if you have a regular dance partner.

And there is another reason, it's much more fun to dance yourself instead of sitting there and watching and waiting until the event's social dancing is continuing!

Our next competition will be in December at the Frenchie Balboa Festival in Toulouse! See you there?