I have just returned from Irvine, California after attending the Embassy Ballroom Championships with dance teacher Yanna Samkova. Glen Okazaki and Ann Ho also attended and participated in the competition, where it was wonderful seeing them perform with such grace and skill. A few others also came from Hawaii as spectators, and it was really nice to get together and share some time with Karen and Stanley.
The Embassy was not my first choice, but my travel schedule did not allow many options. This being my 3rd competition of the year, following the Heritage and Millennium, it was a bit of a letdown. A medium sized competition, it had many positives but also some negatives.
The Venue: Nice place Irvine, nice weather, far enough from downtown LA to have clearer skies and cleaner air, the Hyatt Regency Irvine was a very nice hotel. I loved the Café, for which I frequented every morning to get my fix of their English muffin with egg whites and cheese…..yummy. The room coffee was all I need to do the trick, and I was happy. There was also a half turkey sandwich that I purchased every day for lunch. This was just enough to keep me happy and the blood flowing with the right sugar level, but not overly large or rich in calories to add any unnecessary fat. The rooms were nice, the bar was nice, the restaurant was adequate, and the lobby was typically sterile like most hotels in Anywhere, USA. One restaurant a mile from the hotel worth mentioning was the Winery Restaurant; wow, what wonderful food and ambiance. Plus, my son and his new lovely girl friend Sonja, drove up from Encinitas to share some time and enjoy the dance competition. He was also there when I was awarded one of the top 20 student awards in the Dancesport Series for my performance at Embassy.
The Competition: Medium size is nice, I had 1 to 4 other competitors for most of my heats, the uncontested heats were not plentiful, and the competitors were worthy and reasonably experienced. Overall, I cannot complain. Unfortunately, there were no multidance events for gentlemen, and the unisex events in my age group included an expanded age group starting from 50 yrs and above making it difficult for this almost 66 year old man to make a grand showing. I did compete in one senior event (65+), but that was an open event and my competitors were open “gold” dancers who easily out shined my “bronze” dance skills and put me into 3rd place (however my heat scoring sheets demonstrated that at least several of the judges scored me first (3) and even more scored me second (7) which was very gratifying…..however, I still finished a solid 3rd). Funny, in the past, I would have been happy with taking mostly first and some second places in my single dance events as I did at Embassy, but now it takes more to make me feel that I really accomplished anything of importance.
Nevertheless, I had loads of fun. I had to protect Yanna from Alan Brown, a very funny, quirky, and nice gentleman that I invariably compete against, who was the Dancesport champion last year for his efforts. He is always flirting with Yanna and threatening to steal her away from Honolulu, and he is always wearing a cowboy hat just about everywhere he goes except the dance floor. He also seems to have a separate dance teacher for every day of the competition…and I’m still not sure why he does that. Another competitor, Judy Simon, competes in so many competitions and always dances in more entries than anyone else that I cannot imagine how someone in my age range has the energy and the stamina to do so…..she is always on the dance floor! In one heat, she and I were the only competitors; I was considering sneaking over to dance with her during the heat just for a joke, which I’m sure would not have gone over too well with the judges….I reconsidered and regained my composure and this never happened, but it was fun thinking of acting so silly.
The Positives and Negatives: The comp was reasonably well organized although my heat sheet was incorrect and needed fixing before the competition started. The ballroom was a no frills ballroom with crowded tables and no room to move. It was not adorned with any magical or thematic decor that made it special or unique, except that the lighting was cleverly set to show off glows and shadows in different directions creating a warm and cozy sensation.
The dance floor was adequate and was not split for any heats. The floor space was indeed double the usual space provided for most of the competitions during single dance events. This gave all of us every opportunity to succeed, especially inexperienced dancers, in navigating along the line of dance without collision. These are almost guaranteed when the space is sliced in half and the human “pinballs” have nowhere else to go but bounce off of each other to the next collision.
The Professional Show: To my chagrin, there was no professional show….I somehow thought there was one on the last night but indeed there was only a endless procession of competitions – one after another. But the good news was that the best dancers in the world were there to compete and the quality of the dancing was spectacular. I expect that the Embassy comp was a warm up to this week’s USDC comp in Orlando, Florida where the winners are crowned the champions for the year. This same event I attended the year before and felt little inclination to make a repeat appearance.
What I learned: Finally, I think I learned something about ballroom dancing that I will try to describe in another writing….the concept of “sponge”; that to be really successful in dancing, you have to achieve a certain level of confidence, know your steps and rely on your balance and frame and be able to demonstrate showmanship which are all a prerequisite to allow yourself to “soak up the music” much like a sponge and translate this message through dance. Sounds like my brain has turned into a sponge….but give me a chance to try to explain sometime soon.
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