Might as well be among the first to say it....
          Was anyone else as annoyed as me at Debbie Allen's constant
          comments on the ladies' outfits?  "Oooh, look at that great
          outfit.  At my age, I couldn't wear that.  Where did she get it?
          How do they dance in those high heels?" etc. etc.  And then
          the other commentator said he thought the sleeves of one male
          competitor were too long, and Debbie disagreed.  Like I care
          about this??

          Granted, I'm rather new to ballroom dancing and I haven't
          seen many competitions, but I was a little disappointed
          -- not at the talent of the competitors, but at the way the
          show was put together.  Maybe it was because they squished
          it all into one hour after that silly Ace Venture movie.

          Melissa
          (I can't dance in 4" heels either, but I don't announce it on TV :)

While Debbie Allen wasn't up to snuff, I thought the overall presentation was
not bad for a first attempt (better than I hoped for) and  better than the PBS
show.

At least this show focused on the best of competitive dancing. The producers
seemed to trust the product, the dancing itself, more than the PBS producers,
who have turned that show into a calvalcade of goofy show numbers and cabaret
presentations which don't represent what is actually going on in ballroom
competing these days.

While many people are upset at the new format prescribed by the International
Dancesport Federation (which sold the rights to this show), especially the
addition of solo dances, I thought that the way it was handled last night would
be a small price to pay for getting to see dance competitions on TV.

The solo routines focused on what the dancers do best (I'll watch Michael and
Beata do their samba solo anytime), not on some  show number created just for
the telecast.

I think the show also benefitted from having such a top field, whose skills and
energy came across well on TV. Too often in the PBS show the field has been
somewhat thin, and a few of the competitors a bit old-in-the-tooth, to say the
least.

But this kind of IDSF field, nominally an amatuer field (although some of these
couples are amateur in name only), is probably what works best on TV now:
young, in top shape, making extremely attractive presentations.

I was only surprised that they made so little of the marking  and placements,
especially considering that the IDSF has made such a big deal of changing the
marking system to have stir up more Olympic style excitement between dances.
The results seemed only an afterthought.

As for Allen, the whole issue of who is best suited to work on such events is
still up for grabs. The TV folks seem to think we need a well known personality
in the mix, but Allen not only went on too much about the dresses, she didn't
pick up on any of Gary McDonald's comments about the dancing, leaving much
unexplained to a general audience.

The Nostalgia channel has done better, I think, using a former play-by-play
sports announcer, complemented by an experiened dancer as an analyst.

Still, I think NBC is headed in the right direction, and I would like to see
more. I understand they have an agreement to do another show this year. It will
be interesting to see if they choose ballroom this time, and if they make it as
interesting as the Latin.

'Melissa' posts, in part:

   Might as well be among the first to say it....
   Was anyone else as annoyed as me at Debbie Allen's
   constant comments on the ladies' outfits? ...  And then
   the other commentator said he thought the sleeves of one
   male competitor were too long, and Debbie disagreed.  
   Like I care about this??

Well, from an entertainment perspective, the costuming is a lot of the
attraction.  (And, frankly, I agreed with Gary's comment on the sleeves.)

Even on the Blackpool tapes, where the commentators are quite highly qualified,
you hear quite a bit about the costuming, generally when they don't have
anything much to say about the dancing.

Steve Malanga posts, in part:

  As for Allen, the whole issue of who is best suited to
  work on such events is still up for grabs. The TV folks
  seem to think we need a well known personality in the mix,
  but Allen not only went on too much about the dresses,
  she didn't pick up on any of Gary McDonald's comments
  about the dancing, leaving much unexplained to a general
  audience.

Actually, she did pick up on several of Gary's dance comments - I noticed,
because they tended to be the times when Gary made criticisms that I disagreed
with.

Nor do I think you can blame her personally for the 'male dancer - female
bimbo' approach.  The commentary was a lot more scripted than it appeared -
there was quite a bit of off camera cueing that went on at the event.  She was
just doing what she was hired to do.

  The solo routines focused on what the dancers do best
  (I'll watch Michael and Beata do their samba solo anytime),
  not on some  show number created just for the telecast.

I'd have to disagree with this.  The solos favored couples, like Michael and
Beata, who are strong in the particular solo dances selected.  Me, I would have
preferred seeing the Cutlers doing a rumba solo.

I think unjudged show numbers may be the way to go.  If they are unjudged, the
competitors won't spend a lot of time creating special choreography, but they
will be able to select their own best dances.  And put them all at the
beginning, before the couples get tired - six tired jives in a row was just too
much.

  I think the show also benefitted from having such a top
  field, whose skills and energy came across well on TV. Too
  often in the PBS show the field has been somewhat thin, and
  a few of the competitors a bit old-in-the-tooth, to say the
  least.

Mostly it's an issue of having an international field.  The PBS field is
limited to U.S. couples; the younger ones are even farther from world class
than the older ones.

I did think it a little bogus that they never said the word 'amateur' in the
entire show.  But I understand why they did it - the IDSF doesn't want people
to catch on that there are pros that are even better than the 'amateurs' they
have.

  I was only surprised that they made so little of the
  marking  and placements, especially considering that
  the IDSF has made such a big deal of changing the
  marking system to have stir up more Olympic style
  excitement between dances.

If they really wanted the audience to understand the marking, they wouldn't
have changed to such an obscure system.  I'm not at all surprised - messing
around with the marking system was all part of making it more of a show and
less of a competition.

  The Nostalgia channel has done better, I think, using
  a former play-by-play sports announcer, complemented by
  an experiened dancer as an analyst.

I definitely agree with that.  While I don't have cable, I recently spent some
time watching a tape of one of their shows.  I was really impressed with the
detail with which they were analyzing the actual dancing, and the depth of
understanding that the announcers exhibited.

The Nostalgia channel has definitely got the right idea:  accept the sport as
it is, and show and describe what's going on - the approach that succeeded so
well with sports like football and such.

Warren Dew

Where can we find these new rules?  I was surprised to see the format being
solo sambas, then a three dance cha cha/rumba/paso doble in regular old
group format, followed by solo jives with a short little group jive after
all the individual couples went.  From what you say above, this or something
of this type is the standard now.  I checked the IDSF web site but their
rules page is dated June 8, 1997 and I can't find the new updated rules that
they claim exist in another location.  Are the new rules available on the
web somewhere?  If not, could someone who does have access to the new rules
post them up or just important/relevant pieces or something?  If there is
a change, I would like to know what it is, but can't seem to find any
details.  Thanks.

--
      .      .        .       .         -- James Marshall     (ORI)  *   ,
 ,.  -- )-- ,   , . -- )-- ,            marsh...@astro.umd.edu
          '             '       http://www.astro.umd.edu/~marshall    '''
"Astronomy is a dyslexic's nightmare."                               ,   *

In the interest of the art of dancing, I hope they do.

It is very disturbing to me that NBC did not show the whole thing.
The fact that only the Latin portion of the competition was shown really
bothered me.  There were a couple of references to "the other dances"
that slipped in but for the most part it appeared that the NBC opinion-
makers decided what the public ought to see and simply chopped
Viennese waltz, foxtrot, tango, etc. out of the deal.

I would like to encourage EVERYONE in this newsgroup to contact NBC and
let them know that we would like to see BOTH smooth and Latin dances
presented to the public.  There is a very great danger that if the
public and especially young people only see the Latin dances in
network specials, movies, etc, they will assume the smooth dances are
no longer done by anyone -- which would have the inevitable effect of
leaving the smooth dances out of the current revival in dance interest.  
From my point of view that would be profoundly tragic.

regards,
Dave Goggin

In article <6pe7il$8q...@bigboote.WPI.EDU> eey...@wpi.WPI.EDU ( eeyore ) writes:

Yes, I have to admit that it was a bit irratating that her major comments
were regarding the costumes and asking bunches of questions that Gary
McDonald had to answer.  I can see asking some questions about the dancing
and stuff, but, I don't know, in my opinion they seemed to be rather
stupid questions.  Of course, they're probably not stupid to people who
don't know that much about ballroom dancing.

Well, that depends.  :)  I think Debbie was right that the shirt was cut
to look that way, but I also believe that Gary was right that it made the
sleeves look too long.  His comment was also that it might influence the
judges by creating some distraction in the look of his arm lines (so you
might care about that, to know what the judges might be looking at).
From what I could see, it appeared to go to about the middle of his palm
with some sort of loop that went around a finger.  I'm sure the shirt
was cut that way, but it did make the sleeves look too long.

It did seem rather unusual to me, too.  From what I've gathered by some
other posts in here, this is a new format that the IDSF has agreed to
use and that alone may account for why it seemed strange.  I don't know
if it was really "squished all into one hour" -- the Ohio Star Ball that's
televised on PBS as Championship Ballroom Dancing is one and a half hours
long and it covers both standard and latin final with other exhibition
dances, too.  An hour should have been plenty of time to show the full
latin finals and I would have thought the whole semifinals as well.  I
was a bit disappointed that there were only a few clips from the semis,
but that may just be because I was expecting something different from what
they actually did.  *shrug*  Well, if this is how things are going, I
guess we'll have to get used to this new format.  It is nice to see
ballroom dancing on TV outside of PBS and cable stations, though.  :)

--
      .      .        .       .         -- James Marshall     (ORI)  *   ,
 ,.  -- )-- ,   , . -- )-- ,            marsh...@astro.umd.edu
          '             '       http://www.astro.umd.edu/~marshall    '''
"Astronomy is a dyslexic's nightmare."                               ,   *

In article <6pfv13$mg...@hecate.umd.edu>,

It woudl be nice to see dancing on TV outside of the US too. Sigh.

Timothy

I think NBC wasted alot of time with that silloutte stuff.  I would have
liked 2 hours, but 1 1/2 would have been fine.  What's with the 45
seconds? I know in collegiate competition we get 90 seconds.

We would all like that very much, but it's unrealistic to hope for now.

 NBC is going out on a limb as it is. Sports producers in the US still don't
recognize dancesport as a real sport, and I'm sure the networks also wonder
about whether there's a mass audience for it. (that's what the sillouhette
stuff was for--to get the bulk of the TV audience, which knows nothing about
dance comps or the people who do them, interested in the competitors.)

Given that, I applaud NBC for actually giving us an hour in prime time. It was
a great selling job by the IDSF just to get this far.

There was no ballroom portion of the event. This event was created expressly
for TV. It was an invitational latin event that was put together once the IDSF
sold NBC on televising a comp.

I can only speculate that once NBC agreed to an hour show, the IDSF had to make
a choice of what to produce and decided to go with latin because it might be an
easier sell to a mass audience.

The word ``amateur'' is a misnomer about many of these dancers, especially from
countries like Germany and in Eastern Europe, where top couples are heavily
subsidized, paid for shows,  win prize money and dance fulltime.

Plus, I'm not sure there really is that much  distance between the pros and the
amateurs in the Latin field right now (as long as we're talking about an
international field, not a US one)

There is no one in the pro latin ranks the equivalnt of  the Hiltons on the
professional standard side--that is, way out in front of anyone in the
corresponding amatuer field.

The last two latin amatuer world champs who turned pro immediately made it into
the pro finals at Blackpool their first years as pros.

For an audience whose only exposure to ballroom competitions up to this point
may have been the PBS show, which is limited to North American couples, this
was a step up in terms of the field.

Regarding the competition format used on the recent NBC show, James Marshall
asks, "Where can we find these new rules?"

Heh.  I'm still seeing conflicting published reports about what they are.  It
appears the IDSF aren't telling.

Dave Goggin posts, in part:

  It is very disturbing to me that NBC did not show the
  whole thing.  The fact that only the Latin portion of
  the competition was shown really bothered me.

You needn't feel as upset, then - there wasn't any Standard part of the
competition to show.  And very nearly all of the Latin final was shown - only
the 45 seconds of 'all on' Samba was omitted.

I do hope, as you do, that NBC will do a similar show focusing on Standard.  It
might be more difficult, though, for the producers to come up with as
international a set of competitors and still guarantee a U.S. couple in the
final, as they apparently had to do to get NBC backing.

Warren Dew

Guys, could you come down to earth? The first time some serious dancing
made it to prime time on a major network! That's a milestone.

Personally I thought it was quite good. The first 15 minutes made
me a bit apprehensive, the way they cut everything to pieces, but
that was the semi-finals bit. The finals were done about as decently
as you can expect from a network show.

Ahem. Wasn't the point that "we" (the dancers) want to evangelise,
bring our hobby to the masses? Or would you rather hide everything
dance-related to 3am on tuesday morning on an obscure cable
channel? That would work too. And who cares about drawing more people
into dance, being taken seriously, for instance to pass for a legit
olympic event? "I have a dance partner, I don't want more
people on the floor" :-)

--
Victor Eijkhout
"The Navy began running shipboard applications under Microsoft Windows NT [..]
The ship had to be towed into the Naval base at Norfolk, Va., because
a database overflow caused its propulsion system to fail [...]" (GCN)

Smcnyb wrote in <1998072701173400.VAA27...@ladder03.news.aol.com>...

What you wrote corresponds with my constant claim to give up the
division between professionals and amateurs in international dancing.
As you wrote, there ist no _significant_ difference between these
groups, neither in the way they dance nor in the way they earn their
money. Apart from the top 10 or so couples, most professionals would
have heavy difficulties to make it to an amateur final.

Putting these groups together would help solving some of the problems
in international dancing: a) reducing the number of championships to
an amount that one tv station can handle and even outsiders may
understand (national/continent/world, modern/latin, couples/formations
AND pro/am?) and b) stop the cynical way the "amateur" status ist
dealt with (in Germany, amateurs are not allowed to earn theit living
with dancing; thus some couples are officially workless...).

I know that this is an Idea neither the professionals nor the amateurs
(or at least their organizations) like, but nevertheless I believe
that this is something tu think about...

Achim Jansen

Good points. The IDSF and NBC were not putting on a show for dancers but
for the general public. The number of ballroom dancers in the U.S. is a
small(tiny?) portion of the target audience. The number of those who do
International style is much smaller still. The IDSF may not be pleasing
a lot of dance cognocenti(and any change from the status quo will be met
with grumbling from some of these folks) but it is doing what it needs
to do to promote ballroom as an Olympic sport, and just getting a major
network to air this show was a significant achievement.

George Deliz

On 27 Jul 1998, Achim Jansen wrote:

If I'm not mistaken, some European countries permit their "amateurs" to
actually teach and own studios and engage in other activities which would
not be permitted in the US.  This is aside from any turning a blind eye
from any violation of rules...  I hear that European amateurs are often
quite heavily subsidized.  As far as I'm aware, few if any US amateurs
dance full time to the exclusion of having a non-dance job to pay for
their dancing.  I don't include England in "Europe"--I hear that Enlgish
amateur status is more American than European.

Joe

Victor Eijkhout posts, in part:

  Guys, could you come down to earth? The first time some
  serious dancing made it to prime time on a major network!
  That's a milestone.

It's true, it is a milestone, and we shouldn't lose sight of that.  On the
other hand, it isn't as major a milestone as it would have been a few years
back; what with the plethora of cable channels now available, the networks are
no longer as critical a part of the distribution channel as they used to be.

Given that PBS has been broadcasting "Championship Ballroom Dancing" for years,
I think that it represents less an advance in the size of the audience than in
the way competitive ballroom dancing is presented.  It's a step away from the
'variety show' format toward the 'competitive event' format.  Unfortunately,
it's only a small step in that direction - there's still a long way to go.

  Wasn't the point that "we" (the dancers) want to
  evangelise, bring our hobby to the masses? ... drawing
  more people into dance, being taken seriously, for instance
  to pass for a legit olympic event?

Well, there's two parts to that.  One is to get recognized, which a network
show, even just a one time show like this, helps with.  Another is to get taken
as a serious competitive activity - and that goal, in my opinion, is hindered,
not helped, by changing the competition format specifically for television.  To
the extent that we're willing to change the rules at the drop of a hat, it's
pretty clear that we're not taking our own 'sport' seriously.  And if we don't
take it seriously ourselves, how can we expect anyone else to?

Warren Dew

I bet Andy Fortuna is happy.  Just about every number they
played was from one or the other of his Latin Jam CDs.
However, I didn't like the fact that the solo dances used
the same tune for all competitors -- seemed a bit odd.  Was
there a reason for this (like to give everyone an equal
playing field in terms of music)?  Why not let the
competitors each pick their own music for the solo dances?

Regarding the silhouette part, that was obviously Gary
dancing, but I couldn't tell for sure if his partner was
Diana.  Anybody know?

Greg

In response to Steve Malanga, Achim Jansen posts, in part:

  What you wrote corresponds with my constant claim to give
  up the division between professionals and amateurs in
  international dancing.  As you wrote, there ist no
  _significant_ difference between these groups, neither in
  the way they dance nor in the way they earn their money.
  Apart from the top 10 or so couples, most professionals
  would have heavy difficulties to make it to an amateur
  final.

I agree with the last sentence, but not with the rest of the paragraph.

At least in Standard, if you watch top amateur couples who turn pro, you will
see that some of them show huge amounts of improvement within their first year
as professionals - much more than in any single year as amateurs or any single
year after the first as pros.  Most of the couples that show this pattern of
improvement are English, and thus were amateurs under a relatively strict
interpretation.  And those are the couples that have the best chance of
eventually attaining the to world championship in the professional ranks.

To me, this says that the English are doing something different with respect to
training their amateurs and training their pros.  In particular, I suspect that
with their amateurs, they are laying some ground work on which they capitalize
when a couple turns pro.

And I suspect also that eliminating the amateur/pro distinction, as continental
European countries seem to be doing, may make it more difficult to lay this
ground work, perhaps because people making their livings from dance cannot
afford to spend as much building a foundation before they capitalize on it.

Warren Dew

Warren Dew (psychoh...@aol.com) says:

I'm not convinced of this.  I admit that I don't know the ratings for
the PBS show -- I can't seem to find a listing for them in ratings
lists, probably because their member stations have a lot of leeway
on when to broadcast shows like "CBD" -- but based to the Saturday
overnight ratings, the NBC dance show did pretty well for its
timeslot.  According to Ultimate TV News

    http://www.ultimatetv.com/news/nielsen/daily/98/07/26daily.html

the ratings for 10pm ET were:

  CBS: "Walker, Texas Ranger"                   6.4 rating/13 share
  NBC: "International Dancesport Championship"  5.7 rating/12 share
  ABC: Movie: "Last Action Hero"                4.2 rating/9 share

(A ratings point represents 1% of the 98 million US households that
have tvs; share is percentage of in-use tvs tuned to the show.  So
about 5.6 million households watched "IDC.")

A couple important notes.  First, the lead-in show for "IDC," a repeat
of Jim Carrey's very popular movie "Ace Ventura: Pet Detective," had
only a 5.2 rating/11 share, almost 10% lower than "IDC."  But, last
week's "Unmasked! Exposing the Secrets of Deception" got a much higher
7.1/14 in the "IDC" timeslot.  On the other hand, "IDC" worked as a
good lead-in (with local news in between) for "Saturday Night Live,"
which got a 5.2/15 (though down 10% from last week's 5.7/11).

And of course the overnight ratings are based on a small sample in a
few cities, so their potential for error is high.

Basically, I'd sum up by saying that "IDC" did very respectably for
its timeslot (coming in second), and I suspect it did a lot better
than "CBD."

If anyone happens to know the ratings for "CBD," could you please
post them?

                        Henry Neeman
                        University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
                        hnee...@ncsa.uiuc.edu

In article <1998072714443300.KAA29...@ladder01.news.aol.com>,

*GUARANTEE* a US (or any other nationality, if it comes to that) in the
final?

This is meant to be a competition?

And you think that's a good idea?

Sorry, Warren, (and being in the UK I haven't seen the programme) but
everything I've seen posted here about this programme makes me think that
it's (to say the least) the biggest load of whatsit I've heard of for
years.

Ok I'm all for doing things to popularise dancing (of any form), but let's
show it as it is, not what some TV producer would like to think it is.

Andy

In article <1998072721474400.RAA18...@ladder01.news.aol.com>,
  prone...@aol.com (Prone2xs) wrote:

It was Diana.  I loved the way she and Gary were dressed.  It proved
that you don't have to dress sleazy to be able to dance Latin well.

Ok, so it's a pet peeve of mine...some of those Latin get-ups just go too
far...guys with greasy ponytails and gals with just about nothing on.

Boy do I sound prude!  I guess I am a little...I'd just like to see a tad
bit more elegance and class in the Latin division.

As long as I'm expounding on pet peeves...all the side-by-side precision
moves made it look like the couples were highly skilled Broadway dancers
rather than ballroom dancers.  It would be nice if the couples actually held
hands and danced a little more.  Striking poses during rhumba just doesn't
seem like enough if over the course of 5 dances there's not much other
physical contact.  The Argentine Tango dancers clearly demonstrated that a
lot of highly technical intricate and beautiful work can be done while
maintaining contact between partners.  That's not to say that Latin should be
stuck in closed hold!  Just that a little more hands-on (and I don't mean
posing caresses) work would be nice.

Laura
(who doesn't know much yet but knows what she likes)

-----== Posted via Deja News, The Leader in Internet Discussion ==-----
http://www.dejanews.com/rg_mkgrp.xp   Create Your Own Free Member Forum

Andy Broomsgrove posts, in part:

  *GUARANTEE* a US (or any other nationality, if it comes
  to that) in the final?

  This is meant to be a competition?

  And you think that's a good idea?

Well, it was pretty obvious as to what was going on from looking at the couples
entered.  There was a pretty big gap between Katsevman & Manusova, who were
sixth, and the next (7th) best couple.  For Katsevman & Manusova to have missed
the final would have been extremely unlikely - say, about as unlikely as Watson
& Hardy missing the semifinal at Blackpool.

As for whether it's a good idea - I agree it's not a good idea, in the long
run.  On the other hand, the general public here is not likely to be interested
in a new sport if the U.S. doesn't have anyone who does well.  So in the short
run, I don't mind it that much.

To me, being picky about who you invite to an invitational competition is far
less questionable than messing around with the rules - and in this case, it
will do far more for the popularity of the show.

  Ok I'm all for doing things to popularise dancing
  (of any form), but let's show it as it is, not what
  some TV producer would like to think it is.

That's what I'd prefer, too.  Right now, though, we can only really get that in
the U.S. through a cable channel with rather limited distribution (Nostalgia
channel).

Warren Dew

So do I but I've heard that Championship Ballroom Dancing is one of the
network's most popular programs. I mean, in the top ten or so. Really
popular! I wish I could give a source for that "information".
--
s/ICONO CLAST, a San Franciscan in San Francisco <- ICl...@jps.net ->

I didn't think it was that unusual, especially considering that normally
in competitions where there are multiple heats, the same song is played
for all heats.  I'd imagine they did the solo dances with the same song
for the same reason that they do multiple heats with the same song.
What the exact reason for this is, I'm not certain, but it is probably
as you wrote above to make sure that everyone is starting with the same
level for the music (same tempo and phrasing and all that).

--
      .      .        .       .         -- James Marshall     (ORI)  *   ,
 ,.  -- )-- ,   , . -- )-- ,            marsh...@astro.umd.edu
          '             '       http://www.astro.umd.edu/~marshall    '''
"Astronomy is a dyslexic's nightmare."                               ,   *