Have you seen the 1992 movie, Strictly Ballroom? It’s a mockumentary about the cat-fighting, gossip and egos that dominate the dancesport scene.

He stole his partner from Anton, you know.

That’s the same dress as last competition…

Ha! How can you do a fan in samba?

It’s heel, ball, toe-flat, ONE eh ah ay, TWO eh HOLD ay! Duh!

Whoa, she’s really let herself go since you know what.

Doesn’t she know that she’s meant to rub in that fake tan?

Hey! That collision was deliberate!

Perhaps you thought it was over the top. I’m not a competitive ballroom or Latin dancer but I’ve seen the same bitchiness in the theatrical dance scene.

At every competition, we make comments like:

That’s not hip hop, that’s jazz! Why don’t these people enter the right event?

Those costumes are a bit raunchy for 12 year olds, aren’t they?

That’s the fourth time I’ve seen that item. BORING.

She’s Louisa’s arch rival.

They are so not under thirteen. That team should be disqualified!

That song is awful, what were they thinking?

Why the negativity? I’m sure it’s because at competitions we have to wait around for hours and hours between events. And when you’re bored, surrounded by people with whom you share only one common interest (dancing) and it’s competitive, what else are you going to talk about?

…Sometimes, less often, we’ll silently watch an item. Then:

“That was actually quite good.”

“Yeah… I liked the choreography.”

I’ve tried bringing a book to competitions and even homework, but my powers of concentration aren’t that great! Anyway, I suspect that all other competitive scenes are exactly the same, be it sport, work or arts.

Dance items are often made up of more than one song. The quality of music mixing ranges from professional and polished to hacked together and scratchy. We scorn badly mixed music. Nothing like mis-matched beats to destroy the credibility of your dancing!

This time, I have been forced into a position where I had to combine to music tracks. I wasn’t looking forward to it. I had never mixed music before and expected that very soon, I would forfeit my right to mock other people for amateur audio manipulation skills.

So I’ve spent this morning ripping music off multiple CDs, downloading plugins, converting file formats, combining tracks, cross fading and generating silences. It was the most fun I’d had since yesterday. The result? A quality (haha) remix of Britney Spears and Madonna’s ‘Me against the music’ and Blaque’s ‘I’m Good’.

Huzzah! I retain my scorning rights! 🙂