Subject:  Re: Offbeat Proposal |
Author:
Chris N
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Date Posted: 23:53:48 10/15/03 Wed
In reply to:
Tim C
's message, "Re: Offbeat Proposal" on 12:39:00 10/15/03 Wed
Hi Tim,
Thanks for the comments. For the benefit of those who weren't at the meeting last time, could you please fill in a few missing details?
Firstly, what happened to the original Offbeat proposal that was on the agenda? What comments were made and by whom? Was it voted on, and if so, what was the result?
Secondly, what exactly was the new proposal, who introduced it, and again, what comments were made and what was the result of the vote?
I'm deeply concerned that we have a proposal that was not even on the agenda apparently being voted through with no official record at all. The "two votes" rule can't possibly work effectively in this context. How are Offbeat teams who had no specific rep at the meeting supposed to prepare an informed and constructive response to a proposal they've never had an opportunity to see? The best they can possibly do is try to piece together what was said from what reps who did attend can remember.
I'm particularly concerned that a small but vocal group of anti-Offbeaters are claiming that Offbeat representatives support the current proposal. I've heard that Cambridge voted in favour of it, for example, although my reps assure me that we did not. We've also found that several other university Offbeat reps do not like the current proposal.
There are two recurring arguments used by anti-Offbeaters here that I don't fully understand.
Firstly, the motivation for reducing the time seems fuzzy. On the one hand, there's some concern that IVDA is overcrowded, but on the other, it ran almost on time last year. The usual next argument is that the heats were too long and/or too crowded, which certainly was true. However, as others have pointed out you could reduce that problem in numerous other ways:
1. have more heats with fewer dancers in each and less music time (which is better for judging and dancer endurance anyway)
2. have some sort of qualifier for beginners so those who've done well in previous comps skip the first round or two and we don't have to wait hours for the beginners' one-dance first rounds
3. (blasphemy!) don't try to force all those combined advanced and ex-students rounds into the timetable, when they offer little interest anyway, yet take up another half hour for the same handful of elite dancers who've already danced several times more often than the other competitors anyway.
I have lost track of the proposal to change the Dancesport team match format, which IIRC was going to add another half hour to the length of the day, but I can't help feeling it's hypocritical to object to status quo because it takes too long, argue in favour of dramatically shortening Offbeat to compensate, and then argue for a much longer Dancesport team match format...
The other standard argument for downgrading Offbeat seems to be that Dancesport is the One True Purpose of IVDC, and Offbeat and Rock 'n' Roll are nothing but supporting acts. This view has been offered several times, though I can't help noticing that those offering it are invariably die-hard Dancesport competitors who've never been near an Offbeat practice in their life, and in many cases represent universities that don't enter the Offbeat competition.
Needless to say, this view is not shared by several universities that do enter separate Offbeat and/or Rock 'n' Roll dancers, who work on their performance throughout the year just as the Dancesport teams do. I would have thought the increased numbers entering Offbeat last year supported strengthening the role of the competition, not cutting it down as much as possible. The last fallback argument on this front seems to be the IVDA Constitution, but AFAIK nobody ever worked out when the word "ballroom" appeared in it, so I'm not sure how much weight that holds.
Even if we accept the premise that IVDA is too long and time savings must be made, the current Offbeat proposal seems to be massive overkill. As Terrie argues in her proposal, just keeping teams strictly to the permitted time could cut down the overall time taken by the Offbeat comp dramatically, without changing the format at all. If further cuts are needed, we feel that several alternative options are preferable to cutting the length of the routines so that they're hardly worth bothering with, and Terrie outlines these in her proposal also.
Finally, I'd like to say that I do think it's worth discussing this fully at the upcoming meeting. From our contacts with other universities, we suspect that a different outcome may result if dedicated Offbeat reps from the various universities with a strong interest in this competition are present, or at least able to send a full response to the current proposal, rather than having the debate conducted mostly by people who aren't actually involved in the Offbeat competition themselves.
Cheers,
Chris
(Cambridge Pres)
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