Shaun Brannigan’s Dancesport Blog

A local competition but a well attended one with a number of EADA events on, on the day. We had been upgrading our routines so the new ones were under-rehearsed. Again no recall in the pre, and 2^nd in a tough Intermediate.

Our bogie venue after the first outing. This was our first outing after getting back into things following the toe injury. We’d only had a couple of weeks prep and only went out so quickly as this was warm up for the Ex-Students at IVDC the following weekend end. In the end we didn’t get a recall in the Pre and came 3^rd in the intermediate in a straight final of 5.

This was the big one at the Winter Gardens that Lavinia had so been looking forward to. We had upgraded our choreography in both QS and F for it, but it was under-rehearsed. Also Lavinia injured her foot over Xmas so we were not best placed for this. However, on the performance on the day we were comfortable semi-finalists and I was surprised we didn’t make the final, but then there were a few other established on-form senior intermediates who didn’t either

A more conventionally sized event and the standard being higher as a result. We came 3^rd in Intermediate and got recalls in the Pre but can’t recall whether we made the semi or not

A bit of a distance to travel but we needed to get our Champions of Tomorrow qualification before the deadline. This was more of a local competition so it was a smaller more friendly affair, although still some sizable entries in snr Int and Pre. About 18 in both I think. We won the Intermediate and made the Pre final coming 6^th so pretty pleased on our novice routines.

Lavinia’s first competition and we got no where results wise. Very good competition experience for her and I thought the photos of the tango looked pretty effective. It was a bit of a big competition for a first one and Lavinia was a little like a scared rabbit. She kept on threatening to leave the building and go shopping.

When I moved to Warwick I contacted the University Dancesport Club for some local info on dancing. They invited me to their closing event of the 05/06 season which was a social competition. It was good fun and I got to know a few more of the team.

As I was then on contract in Warwick for the Uni dance season, I danced for Warwick, or Team Sparkle as they are known on the circuit (a drunken episode with a can of glitter spray led to the knickname). Warwick Uni Dancesport Club seems to have a number of drunken episodes so I fitted right in.

As with Manchester the difficulty was in finding a partner. In the end I went to the conventional external Partners Wanted resources. Through this route I met Janine Parry, another mature student/senior, who is studying at Wolverhampton University. We met only 2 weeks before NUDC. So across the season I have danced with various other partners.

(late Apr) Well this was the final and sad closer of the season – so many friends gained over the last couple of seasons and a number moving on. So it was all set for a great competition, and a great competition it was as well. With all of the Exs coming out of the woodwork this was the highest standard uni competition I’ve seen recently outside of IVDC.

Janine was nursing a pressure foot injury so we didn’t enter the foxtrot or the quickstep. Also skipped the jive. So results were:

Mayfair Quickstep 1^st (Yay my first Uni win ever)

Open Tango 5^th (very pleased to make any final with the competition that was there)

Open Waltz & QS quarter finals

Open Paso – semi final – my 1^st ever Manchester semi in open latin

Open Samba & Cha – I think we made the quarters and the Rumba was a blur

Team Waltz: 6^th. Not as high as some comps but in this company we were very pleased to make that final and we danced to pretty good effect.

(mid March) The big one in Blackpool. Two weeks since the Northerns but lost a week through illness so not much more practice. Had hoped that Lavinia could make this for the Ex-Students but work commitments prevented that. With the national level standard so high it was not a good day on marks, but what an occasion and what a venue. I was so pleased with all of the Sparkle beginners.

All team sparkle results are at: http://www.brannigan.co.uk/ivdc2007/

My results were: Intermediate Ballroom WTQ 28th of 49 R1=9/11, Intermediate Latin CRJ 42nd of 64: R1=13/14 , Team Match A W Qual=8 Div1 R1=7

(late Feb) OK time to get serious now for the Northerns. I’d been getting a little fed up of stand in partners where I couldn’t really show my dancing qualities, so looked in the normal partners wanted places and found Janine Parry who didn’t live so far away.

We only had two weeks preparation for the Northerns. In addition I danced ex-student with Jan. We had to arrange a Paso which we hadn’t done for Manchester or Keele/Leeds. I emailed her the routine and we spent 30 mins on it in practice before hand. In the round it was called in we got more recalls in the Paso than the other dances.

An early good start was achieved in making the final of the Lilac Waltz of an initial entry of about 121. We came 3^rd in the end. Our results were:

Lilac Waltz - 3rd out of 121 entrants (that still blows me away, not just the 3rd but 121 entrants)

Int Tango - 3rd of 19 (still very pleased with this as well)

Team QS - 3rd of 32 - so pleased to keep up my 3rd results for the team with my 3rd partner

Basic Waltz - 13th of 74 (dang just missed the semi - forgot it wasn't advanced in 2nd round so sorry about the X line - so many events so little practice)

Open 5dance Ballroom - 13th of 41 (again just missed the semi)

Ex Waltz (the less said about this the better. The best I'd ever danced Waltz with Jan: on the actual marks we appeared pants)

Basic Cha - 12th out of 74. OK but it was still the Semi, and it's good to see that a couple of seniors can hold their own against the youngsters in Latin. Pretty pleased with this one.

Int Rumba 7th out of 37 (Oh so close to the final)

Open 5 Dance latin - (with Ex Jan, as opposed to Student Janine) 16th out of 57. Not too shabby at all. Paso made up on the day, which went a bit haywire in the last couple of bars where I had to ad lib to avoid going (too far) against the line of dance. Still it got more recalls than our Jive.

Ex Cha - 7th of 12  dang just missed that final again.

Team KO - no results posted but got thrown into Samba in ballroom gear, forgetting that Janine had only once ever danced Samba with me. Ho hum it was fun.

With all of the events that I entered I worked out later that I’d danced solidly for almost an full hour of the day. No wonder I was shattered afterwards.

(mid Feb) This was another comptn I just went along to watch at. I was sitting at the beginning lamenting not being able to dance with the Leics Team Captain, Sian, who had resigned herself to acting in the role of photographer all day. Mid way through the conversation the obvious observation occurred to both of us. So a quick registration later into the bar area for some 20 mins of choreography and we entered Intermediate Tango (making the semi I think), Basic Foxtrot – we got slaughtered on a hideously full floor so no recall, the Samba, got some recalls and the Rumba.

Choreographing the rumba led to some costume challenges with poppers. A deft bit of sewing solved the problem. Sian danced team with Alex from Leicester so I sat that one out. Or more lay that one as during the line up due to my now infamous snooze in the bar – it had been an early start, I wasn’t dancing so maybe had a drinkette or three. Still very good fun and partner number 3 for the season

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(early Feb) I had hoped to do this one with Lavinia (under the ex-students rule) but she was still resting her mangled toe, so Janine got pressed into action again. At least this was a bit more organised this time with her coming to Warwick for a couple of days to practice in the afternoon. We still did umpteen dances on only another 8 hrs practice though.

On the day the performance suffered somewhat as Jan got two very hard knocks in the same place on the ankle very early on. The medicinally applied G&Ts somehow seemed also to be having a counterproductive effect.

I recall we made finals in Open Foxtrot, Tango and Quickstep and Semis in Cha Rumba and Jive. In Team Quickstep we had a bit of an injury/gin induced ‘mare and came 5^th.

(early Dec) Partner crisis struck again. After the penultimate team practice before this event I went home fed up and resigned to watching again from the side lines. I text Jan whom I’d be seeing the weekend of the event anyway and she suggested we danced it together: which was allowed with the Manchester ex-students rule.

Well we hadn’t danced seriously in 18 years. After a lesson with Lavinia on the Sat afternoon, I drove back to Manchester to squeeze in some practice on the Sat evening and Sunday morning with Jan, to then go to a competition with Lavinia on the Sunday at Brierly Hill.

Well the practice must have paid off a little as we came second in the Mayfair Quickstep, 3^rd in the team quickstep and made a number of recalls during the day – but not in the Samba which was a shame as we enjoyed that one.

(mid Nov) I had no firm partner for this one so went along to watch. It was half arranged for me to dance team match with the Vice President and competition organiser Lucy. In the end we did dance, but as she had been up late the night before, early that morning and running around all day she was feeling a little under the weather. I got a firm lecture during the team line up that we were to stick to the very basics. I joked with her that I’ll throw in some scatter chassees in the last circuit in the final. It raised a smile.

Well just goes to show that dancing basics well can have an impact. We made the final and did two circuits of basics before throwing in the promised scatter chassees, a little to her surprise. We came 3^rd in the end which as we’d never danced a step of quickstep together before the team warm up wasn’t bad at all. Warwick A also came 3^rd overall so were very pleased as this had been their best result in recent years.

As the student funds had been dwindling I had been looking for temporary contract work in the North West but with little success. Broadening the search got me a 3 month contract in Warwick. So picking up my crutches I moved (again). Work and relocations have always blighted my dancing continuity.

What was originally intended as a 3 month contract soon extended by another 6 months, and then another 6 months and now another… well you get the picture. The current project plan extends to 2010. So I’m now looking to transfer from Manchester Business School to Warwick Business School.

So in a new locality I started looking for a new Social Partner and fixed up with Lavinia. She was novice sort of standard but keen and sociable. We went to general dancing in Elmdon Heath and Martin Cutler’s social classes.

She was keen to compete but I had made it clear that I couldn’t dance below Pre-Champ in Latin and Intermediate in Ballroom, having already got the clarification from EADA. So one November evening after practice we went down our usual wine bar, she plied me with wine (not a hard job) and twisted my arm to do at least a few competitions, so I agreed and Cheltenham was our first competition on 5^th Nov 06. We did Leatherhead (where we qualified for Champions) and Brierly Hill quickly after that as build up to Champions. However, over Xmas the wind blew a door onto Lavinia’s foot. Through the painkillers we danced champions, narrowly missing the final at Senior Intermediate Ballroom.

So that left us with a few months off for recovery, and what with foreign trips and respective illnesses it doesn’t feel like we’ve danced much this year, only having danced Cheltenham in March, Bloxwich and Worcester – but see recent results for this stuff.

It’s a little unusual to have a senior and an experienced male at the society so I never had a regular partner. After the first term I had got the bug again so looked locally for a social partner which is when I started dancing with Claire in the January. She came along to some of the Uni Comps and we did a SupaDance comp as well

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Claire

(mid March) We traipsed all the way down to Guildford the night before for this competition. I was dancing team with Natalie (of Sheffield ‘fame’) in Quickstep and doing Ex-Students with Claire. This must have been one of the worst organised competitions I’ve ever been to. Our First Round grouping was advertised for 11am hence the travel the night before, but in the end I recall it was gone 3 before we got on the floor. I seem to recall that in Ex we got one recall in the Ballroom and made the semi of the latin – but could be wrong.

In the team match Manchester A made the first division through the qualifiers and I think we got one recall in Division 1.

(late Feb) I went on the coach to this one purely to support as I had no partner at all. When we got there Team Captain Steve ‘trawled’ around his contacts and introduced me to Kat who was also partnerless at the competition. Because of our previous respective form we could only enter the open advanced section. We went into the basement practice area to put some routines together and did all 4 ballroom in an hour.

It was only in the first round that I realised that we had never danced these to music and although we had agreed the moves hadn’t so much worked on the timing. Still we got through, ironed out the wrinkles and made the semi-final beating some much more established couples. We also made the final of the VW one dance competition.

(mid Feb) There was a very light weight showing from Manchester at this competition with the whole team travelling over in just two cars. Natalie Bell was press ganged into dancing with me and I think we did Team Quickstep. We also did a lot of the open dances on class routines which we adapted on the day. I can’t remember how we did which suggests that it wasn’t very well.

(early Feb) As I had no team partner for this competition, Claire came along to watch. We had only met a couple of weeks earlier, and on the coach on the way over the Team Captain produced a team list with her name on it, which was as much of a surprise to me as to her. As a friendly competition the are no rules on student status so Claire was able to dance at this competition

Well we did some of the open competitions as well as the team match (with quickly arranged loan dress). Our results were: Open Waltz 4^th, Open Cha 7^th, Team Waltz 2^nd, Open Salsa 6^th. Not bad seeing as we’d put half of the routines together on the day.

The first competition of the season in early November designed more to initiate the beginners into Uni comps. I danced with Roksana Stana from Poland who was very experienced, although we only had 10 days in which to prepare. We got around the floor with reasonable style and came 2^nd in the team Waltz. Over the Xmas break Roksana ended up taking on more load from the family business so could no longer find time to dance.