Competitions
North Star Blues Exchange will be hosting three competitions. We will have a Jack and Jill contest, a Strictly Blues, and the return of its one of a kind team cutting competition. Our head judge and competition coordinator is Damon Stone.
Jack and Jill (7$)
Free passes and cash prizes
This competition is open to all levels of dancer in any style Blues. Just grab someone and start dancing. The judges will continue tapping out the crowd and you'll keep selecting new partners until we reach approximately 5 couples. Then partners will be assigned at random, and you'll be judged as a couple in the final round. Prelims will be to DJed music, but the finals music will be a live band. Dancers will be judged on Blues Aesthetic, Musicality, and Creativity.
Strictly Blues (10$)
Cash and Free Passes prizes
This competition is for partnered couples. The music selected by our DJs will be of varied tempos but will be primarily be in the Classic, Piano, and Jazz Blues style. You may dance any style of Blues, and dancers will be judged on Blues Aesthetic, Musicality, and Creativity.
Team Cutting (25$)
Winner take all cash prize
Cutting, or challenge dancing, has existed for as long as dance has been around. The roots of it can be traced back to derision dances in West Africa. Different forms of it have been done throughout history, ranging from the Cake Walk and Jig contests of the days of slavery, to back room joints like the Hoofer's Club, to grand ballrooms like the Savoy where Whitey's team of youngsters went up against Shorty's team of seasoned veterans and a young Frankie Manning introduced the first airstep, all the way to the b-boy battles of the 80's and krump sessions of today. The soul of improvisational dance was put on display in battles of skill and heart both solo, partnered, and team.
North Star Blues is proud to bring you the first contemporary Team Cutting contest for Blues dancers, now in its third year!
Teams will be a minimum of four people and a maximum of eight. Teams can consist of any gender ratio, and any combination of dancers from the same or multiple cities. Take this opportunity to dance with some of your favorite people from your own or even other scenes! Work as a team with both solo and coupled movement.
The rules are simple: use your best blues moves to the music of our choosing with the team of yours. While you are encouraged to practice and prepare with your team, the spirit of the competition rests in being able to dance to the music in the moment. Your team may still will want a few choreographed moves, however, organic dancing is the essence of cutting. Dance as it fits the music, dance to what your opponents give you, but most of all dance as the music makes you move. Respect your opponents, and leave it all on the floor. Coordinated team outfits/costumes are highly encouraged.
This is an audience judged competition. Assemble your crew and practice your steps, because Saturday night someone is getting served and one team is going to walk away with all the bragging rights.
For some inspiration check out a couple of these clips:
Judging Criteria
- Blues Aesthetic
An athletic posture with weight on the balls of the feet; bent knees;chest forward, hips held back. A loose and relaxed physical connection to your partner. An obvious connection between the base rhythm and their body's movement (pulse). A delay or lag between partners, and between the dancers and the music. - Musicality
Dancing to the tone and feel of the song. - Creativity
Doing variations of their movement, improvisational.
- An athletic, grounded, "Earth as Center" or "get-down" body posture and movement, characterized by the weight being held on the balls of the feet, the knees bent over the balls of the feet, the hips pushed back, and the front of the shoulders or the sternum pitched forward over the knees. In this posture a dancer should be able to step in any direction without having to shift their body first.
- An asymmetry and polyphonic look/feel to the body, characterized by an equality of body parts. No limb or part is given precedence over another, but relaxed and all working together both in a simultaneous and serialized fashion. The center of "energy", focus and even weight shifting moves through various parts of the body; polycentric.
- Rhythmic movement. Not just auditory but visual. Rather than a single rhythm being used in/with the body mutiple meters or rhythms are used. Articulated movement in the torso (chest, rib cage, pelvis, butt) identifying and emphasizing different rhythms.
- Improvisation between dancers and on their own movements. All entrenched in the rhythm of the music.
- A drawing of the beats, dancing in the space between the beats, pushing and pulling creating a sense of tension both in the body and the body moving through space, while remaining loose and relaxed. The sense of moving through molasses or mud. A relaxed, lazy element to the interaction with the tempo and beats of a song, as if it doesn't matter if you are late, but somehow without seeming to rush always being on time.