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How the Competition was Judged... The Mayan preliminary judging was done over a period of eight weeks. Semi Finals were judged over four weeks; two weeks for Amateur and two weeks for Professionals. The Finals were judged over two weeks, again, a week for the Amateurs and a week for the Professionals. The Professional and Amateur competions were judged separately. For the Preliminary rounds, nine salsa dancers were selected as judges from the audience at random, about an hour prior to the competion that night. After the compeitors danced their minute and a half, each judge held up a card numbered from 1 to 5, where 5 was the highest score. That way, there was no question as to who voted what for whom. Every judge exposed his/her rating to the audience. A big-screen TV projected the dancers in the background so all 2,000 people in the audience can see the beauty of Los Angeles Street Salsa dancing at its best. For the Semi-Final rounds, each couple got to dance for two minutes this time, to a song of their choice. A total of seven judges were chosen. Three judges were picked from the audience, and four judges were chosen due to their professional dance background, both in ballroom style, and street style. The same judges were used for both weeks of the competition. This time, they did not hold up a number. They used a clipboard and a sheet where they placed a numeric score based on choreography, partnering, musicality, etc. They could also pick any position of the floor to judge from for their own best assessment. The total points from all the judges were not given until later on in the evening. At the end of the second week of competition, every couple's score was announced and the top six competitors were chosen to go to the final rounds. The way the Mayan did it this year is a bit different than last year. This year, they are splitting the semi-final competition in half, depending on the date you danced your preliminary rounds. If you danced in the first 4 weeks, you danced in the first semi-final session. If you danced within the last 4 weeks of preliminaries, you danced in the second session. This went for both Amatuer and Professional divisions. The top six scores went to the finals. In my own opinion, I don't think this method of "splitting up" the groups by date, and "stretching out" the contest like this is very fair because the competitors who get to compete in the 2nd session got a chance to "peak" at the first group, and have an entire week to improve or work on their routines based on how the crowd responded to certain routines. Last year there was a big controversy due to highly experienced ballroom judges favoring the ballroom competitors at the Professional level. However this year, the Mayan ensured the competitors by sending them each a letter to their homes stating that judging would be done by both "Street-Savy" street-dancer and experienced ballroom judges combined. The way they did it for the Semi-Final and Final rounds, the Mayan chose four Professional judges, and three hand-picked judges from the audience. The Professional judges were all formally introduced, by name and dance experience. The audience judges were each asked to stand in front of the audience, hold up their right hands, and repeat, out loud, "I promise, to judge fairly...." or something like that. It was as if they were in court swearing-in! It was really quite humorous. The following is a copy of one of the judges’ papers on how they were asked to judge each competitor If you'd like more information, or just want to chat, I can be reached at edie@salsaweb.com |
