• Skip to secondary menu
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Shuffle Projects

Swinging Projects for Lindy Hop & Balboa Dancers

  • HOME
  • ABOUT
  • DJ CHRiSBE
    • Song of the Week
  • RESOURCES
  • CONTACT

Dance

Swing Dance Competition: Relative Placement Scoring System

10.09.2011 by Chris

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

Filed Under: Dance Tagged With: Competition, Contest, Dance, Relative Placement, Scoring System, Swing

Swing Elite – A New Social Network for Swing Dance & Music Addicts

21.07.2011 by Chris


Swing Elite - A New Social Network for Swing Dance & Music Addicts

Three days ago, I read the first time about Swing Elite – The Social Network:
Silvia Palazzolo was spreading the word on Facebook.

Curious as I am, I promptly joined the network – as number 43 🙂 – and checked it out.

Christian on Swing Elite

Three questions appeared to me pretty soon. So I thought, I'm going to ask them Silvia directly.

Interview with Silvia Palazzolo


Silvia, who exactly is behind Swing Elite?

Once upon a time Bruno Rossi and Vincenzo Buldrini were smoking a cigarette and Bruno told Vinz: why dont' we make a swing social network? And Vinz was like… Mmmmm.. don't know! Maybe, why not?

Then days went by and suddently Vinz texted me telling me he was ready. Ready for what – I asked. Ready to start our project. I was so excited and brought some amazing ideas under Bruno's supervision, and Vinz challenge after challenge brought them to reality. And today the network is open and new functions are added everyday thanks to your enthusiasm.

Now what? Now its your turn.

Who is the swing elite?
It's you.


What is your main goal with Swing Elite? Everybody is using Facebook, why should one change to Swing Elite?

Of course we don't even think to compete with Facebook! 🙂

We don't think people should choose between SE and FB; both networks should be used in a complementary way. Swing Elite will complete FB and vice versa! For this reason, we're going to complement SE with FB more and more in the future, so that they can be used together.

The big difference and the reason for which a swing dancer, musician, teacher or addict should use Swing Elite, is that it allows you to find swing events, swing related websites, new friends with exactly the same interest as yours, while facebook is for everybody, and has every kind of events and groups.

Swing Elite is not a boring platform where people can just read and watch what's going on, its users are the most important part of it! They can join events, add their comments and their opinion, rate them, and maybe in the future they might be able to take advantage of special offers on these events, thought and dedicated to them exclusively!

At the same time they can find out about new events they didn't know about – it's not so easy to find specific events on Facebook, if you are not a friend to all the organizers and the dancers in the world… on Facebook, at the end, one gets to know about the most advertised and popular events. Here on SE, all the events are advertised in the same way, you can see them day by day as they are getting closer, and you can interact with them whilst having fun.

So, our goal is to put together all the features of a portal/platform with those of a social network, giving the users' opinions and interests the importance they deserve!

We aim to bring together people with the same interests and to entertain them with the typical social network features, whilst providing interesting and easy to find information!

For now we provide events and websites, besides pictures and videos, but we're just at the beginning and a lot of new things and interesting tools are on their way! For example, we're already working on a mobile version of the website, so that people can keep in touch through their cell phones, or find things to do in every corner of the world, just having a look at their telephone.


“Swing Elite” indicates only a certain group of swing dancers resp. only the better ones. Why was this name chosen?

We posted an explanation of the name on our forum here on the website. But, maybe what follows is easier to understand.

Yeah, this point has been controversial and we didn't expect it. Maybe our concept of elite has been missunderstood: we are a group of people with the same interest: swing. And we are here to have fun together.

The main idea is: yes, its an elite (because not everybody all over the world is interested in swing!) but its also open for everyone who wants to be a part of it! its not like we're examinating subscriptions or doing selections: everyone is welcome! You wanna be part of the swing elite? Simply press the join button and you're in! You don't wanna be in the swing elite? Well, you don't know what you're missing 🙂

Elite has not a negative meaning: we are not talking just to the best swing dancers or musicians or whatever. That has been misunderstood. We're talking to everybody who's part of the swing world. Which is itself an elite, because not all the world is part of it. Do you understand what I mean?


If you allow me too, I would like to use this little interview to explain better who we are and what we do also to other people.

We have great ideas to develope this social network: new languages, new tools, and a lot more. We think that everyone should really join it.

***

The interview was held in writing.


Now my question to my readers: Is it necessary to have another social network? Are you joining Swing Elite? Leave a comment!

UPDATE
It seems that Swing Elite couldn't attract enough dancers to keep the service up. The website is not available anymore.


Filed Under: Swing News Tagged With: Dance, Interview, Social Network, Swing, Swing Elite

Balboa Mini Workshop in Singapore 12.05.2010

11.05.2010 by Chris

NEWS FLASH – spontaneously organized by Sinclair Ang!

During the stop over from my flight back from Sydney to Zurich, I'll gonna teach in Singapore:

Shuffle Baby, Shuffle! by Christian BossertSHUFFLE BABY, SHUFFLE!

Balboa mini workshop by Christian Bossert – Balboa addict, Swing dance instructor and DJ, directly from Zurich Switzerland.
Learn one of the Balboa Shuffle steps and get an awesome technique to dance to the fastest music!

Where:
Popstars City, Robertson Walk, #02-05, Singapore

Date/Time:
12.05.2010 7.30-9pm

Level:
all, Balboa basic steps required

Shoes:
don't forget to bring shoes with leather soles!

Costs:
S$ 32

Registration:
Not necessary, just turn up.

Filed Under: Education Tagged With: Balboa, Dance, Workshop

Balboa Mini Workshop in Glebe Sydney 17.04.2010

13.04.2010 by Chris

SHUFFLE BABY, SHUFFLE!

Balboa mini workshop just before “Swing @ The Roxbury” by Christian Bossert – Balboa addict, Swing dance instructor and DJ, directly from Zurich Switzerland.
Learn one of the Balboa Shuffle steps and get an awesome technique to dance to the fastest music!

Where:
The Roxbury Hotel, 182 St Johns Road, Glebe NSW 2037

Date/Time:
17.04.2010 7-8pm

Level:
all, Balboa basic steps required

Shoes:
don't forget to bring shoes with leather soles!

Costs:
AUD 20 (entry fee for “Swing @ The Roxbury” is included!)

Registration:
Not necessary, just turn up. Event is published on Facebook.

Any questions? Please feel free to contact me!

Filed Under: Education Tagged With: Balboa, Dance, Workshop

Primary Sidebar

Welcome, I'm Christian Bossert. Since 1999, I‘ve been passionate about Swing dances as well as their culture and history. I‘m a Swing dance instructor and international Swing DJ Chrisbe, based in Zurich Switzerland. Read More…

Recent Posts

  • Alphabetical Jazz Steps – Edition 3 (2017) with Chester Whitmore
  • Marcia & Chris unterrichten bei Dance2bee in CH-Muhen, 10.-13.07.2017
  • WhatStep – Your Dance Move Assistant App: The Story
  • Februar-Aktion: 15% auf iTunes Geschenkkarten
  • Marcia & Chris are teaching Balboa in D-Dortmund, 27.-29.11.2015

Most Popular Posts

  • 33 Tips & Actions How To Become A Better Swing Dancer
  • Swing Summer in Europe: Studio Hop Summer Camp in Eauze France
  • Competing at ABW and ESDC
  • Dance Teaching Idea: Ask & Tell
  • A Day At The Balboa Experiment
  • Frankie Manning: Never Stop Swinging (Documentary)
  • 14 Tips To Become A (Better) Swing DJ

Copyright © 2023 · Lifestyle Pro on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in