Ballroom Dance Competition

This week was crazy and hectic. Along with school, work, and contacting different corporations for (hopefully) a summer internship, I also had a huge event on my plate: Saturday was Binghamton Ballroom's Tenth Annual Dance Competition. Along with dancing on the team, I also helped to organize the event with a fellow teammate. Saturday was a huge day and this past week leading up to the competition was just pure chaos. While we began planning and organizing the event since September, all last minute details just got caught up in the past week, all I could focus on was our competition.

For the most part, everything went along smoothly and as planned. Friday evening was our social, which is when several of the universities that are competing on Saturday come up. Everyone mingles and dances with each other and enjoys each others company. Things got a little crazy when one of the universities showed up late and we had to scramble for last minute housing. Overall however, it was alot of fun.

Having way too much fun!

Saturday morning started out early at 6:15am and went all the way until 10:30 pm. The morning and afternoon session included competitiors from the different universities dancing. For those of you who are not familiar with Ballroom Competitions, it is pretty much run in events and levels. Here is the order of levels (experience): Newcomers, Bronze, Silver, Gold, Pre-Champ. The events on Saturday were as follows: Smooth (American Waltz, Tango, American Foxtrot) and then Rythm (American Cha-Cha, American Rumba, and Swing). After a quick lunch break were the events Standard (International Waltz, International Foxtrot, and Quickstep) and then Latin (International Cha-Cha, International Rumba, and Jive). The Bronze level competitiors dance first, then the Newcomer level, then Silver level, Gold level, and finally Pre-Champ level in the respective events. A little confusing? It's hard to understand by only reading it. You have to be there, it is quite an experience!

My partner and I danced Bronze level for all of the dances, but on a whim we decided that we were going to enter the Silver level Mambo and Swing. And it turns out we won 5th place for our Silver Mambo!

We won 6th place for our Fun Dance Salsa!

In the evening, we booked a performance couple, who were absolutely AMAZING!

Jose DeCamps and Joanna Zacharewics

The photos from their performance at our competition are not available yet, but just to give you a picture of how great they look.

They had five performances that were absolutely incredible. As a competition coordinator, I was fortunate enough to meet them. It is insane to see them perform in front of an audience and then shake their hands afterwards. It was like they weren't real! P.S. Jose winked at me...I melted.

I am so relieved it is over. It was a ton of fun but so much work. Would I do it again for next year? We shall see, I don't have to decide until the end of the school year. Until next year....

Photos: courtesy of various members on the team and Google Images