I went to the Varsity Dancesport competition between Cambridge and Oxford. The scoring system is very interesting. The competition is split into two levels. The A team is generally better than the B team, with a few exceptions of experienced couples who are not eligible for A team because they’re not students of Cambridge or Oxford.

Everyone dances four dances: Waltz and quickstep for the modern ballroom section; and cha cha and jive for the latin section. Everyone ends up dancing the waltz three times, the quickstep three times, and so on. It’s set up like a round robin so that different combinations of Cambridge and Oxford couples dance against each other. I believe that by the time all the waltzes are done, every Cambridge couple has waltzed against every Oxford couple, and the audience has sat through about eight or nine rounds of waltz (it could have been more or less — I couldn’t keep track). The algorithm for selecting couples for rounds was a mystery to me. I had no idea what was going on for most of it. Then, of course, it’s repeated for the other three dances.

The couples are ranked in each round and awarded points. Cambridge couples’ points are aggregated and compared to the sum of Oxford couples’ points. The two latin dances are added together, as are the two ballroom. So a score is reported for Cambridge ballroom versus Oxford ballroom, then Cambridge latin versus Oxford latin. The ballroom and latin scores are summed and the winning team has the highest points.

This year, Cambridge won the B Team match for the first time. It also won the A Team match by a long way. It seems that all year, Cambridge has been trumping Oxford. These are the top two university dancesport teams in the UK and they take turns being on top. It would have been quite an experience to dance with the team. I’m sorry I’ve missed my opportunity.

Here are a few photos I took. No spectacular ones but I was there to enjoy watching the dancing rather than take photos, so anything decent was a bonus.

A quiet moment on the dancefloor.

I tried to pan with the moving couples (that is, follow the couples with my camera while the aperture was open) and actually came up with some clearer ones than this. But I like the colour and the composition here.

This is the Cambridge A Team’s ‘walk on’ for the latin section, which was a pretty cool routine. Think of it as equivalent to the All Blacks’s Haka, which is meant to frighten the bejeezers out of the opposition.

For reference, here is the All Blacks’s haka… Yep. That’s exactly what the ‘walk on’ was like.

For your information, Tonga (in the red) lost that match 90 to 7. Maybe the Oxford team need to have a chat to our mates in New Zealand…

And now, back to our normal programming — ‘A Team’ Latin.

Hey, I stick my tongue out at my dance partners as well!

And here she is, with a more conventional ‘dancesport’ face.