Dupree Dance Expo
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This was our first time at Dupree. My dancer switched from the junior (10-12) to the teen (13-15) class when we saw the difference in class schedules. For the same price we were able to get commercial dance and jazz funk added to her schedule, which was not possible in the junior room because of all the extra breaks they'd scheduled and the "parent and me" class. We were surprised she was given a half scholarship to return next season since she was only called out by one teacher all weekend (the Bollywood teacher who also teaches for Heat convention), but we were discouraged by the way certain teachers were only paying attention to the people they were used to seeing. The ballroom easily had over 100 kids in it, so they had to break into 5 groups for the combos, and at the end of tap class, the tap teacher started asking where certain kids were by name. When they would raise their hands, the teacher would say something like, "why are you hiding in the back? I saw your solo last night, you're good, be confident." Or "so-and-so, why are you hiding, your tap shoes are a special color, you should be confident in your abilities." It's unfortunate that they expect students to push their way to the front of the class to be seen, especially in an overflowing class that size. It was also unfortunate that my daughter needed to be in the teen class to get a quality class line up, since they wouldn't be looking for her in that teen class after seeing her compete with the juniors.
The competition awards were...odd...to say the least. Before adjudication scores were announced, each judge came out and gave out some awards it seemed they had made up that evening to fit the people they wanted to reward, but one comment stuck out in such a funny way, our friend who had come to cheer us on did a double take and cracked up with me. It went to a duo and sounded something like this, "the partnership work you're trying is very difficult and I know this is the beginning of your season so I can't wait to see this get good". It was like her way of saying, "I know we'll be seeing you again soon hopefully this will be better by then, thanks for your loyalty here's an award."
The convention/competition was a little on the disorganized side. We had traveled 7 hours to attend, and had packed for the classes in a way that made sense with the schedule they had released, but on the morning before convention, they changed the schedule and didn't update any of the studio owners by email. They had my dancer's song title wrong somehow on the night of her solo (it was in a completely different language), and when registering for the event, the website wouldn't work so we had to be emailed a PayPal request to register which was especially hard to receive via email because of all the security in place against scammers.
All in all it felt like we were in a stranger's house, visiting someone else's family.