COMPETITION DETAIL

We just attended this past weekend. It was very clear that the director/MC had a personal relationship with one of the studios there as she made several references during awards about receiving text messages from one of the teachers from said studio about a graduating senior! In addition, this particular studio owner was rude and kept going up to the judging staff and MC about who knows what as students were performing. Relationships between competition directors and studio directors/teachers are fine, but when there is blatant favoritism that becomes a problem. Not only do the other studio directors/teachers see it, but when the students and parents are complaining and are affected, that is a greater problem. In addition, the rules state soloist receive a plaque for adjudicated awards. Only overall placements received a plaque, so that left all of the other soloists with just a tiny pin to commemorate their score which for a $95 entry fee is absurd, I guess these are just a few of the reasons why this competition gets smaller every year and why many studios including ours won't return.

ADA attracts ELITE Dance schools (a pro) and judges focus on many skills (Technique, Performance, choreography and to some extent costume). You will find some of the MOST gifted performers at this competition. I would not recommend that a mid-level or recreation Studio attend. Your students will leave trophy-less and disappointed! I attended 2 regionals. Judges critiques are insightful, helpful and I was impressed overall with their attention and skills. We did have one judge who obviously did NOT have TAP experience. I\'m Not sure why he was on the panel or MAYBE he did have insight, but didn\'t critique much. I\'ll never know! ADA is family owned and is run OLD SCHOOL (Programs have typed inserts vs being bound to save $$$.They should invest in technology!) Marcia was our MC & is a HOOT! Don\'t expect flying Frisbees or parent dance-offs!Awards are short! ADA assigns a \"SPECIAL AWARDS\" judge whose ONLY job is to pin-point a special quality of a certain dancer that should be recognized. It is not based on points (very subjective) however, this judge is always an industry expert and to get a SPECIAL AWARD is an achievement. Regionals are an opportunity to JACKET CHASE- These dancers compete amongst themselves at Nationals in convention like setting and Opening number.Our comp was held at Notre Dame High School Lawrenceville, NJ.Janitor opened entrance doors 20 minutes late. Mid-way through the comp, some 500 people were told to pack up and move from the gymnasium to class rooms far from the auditorium. NOT COOL and ADA should have known the venue was triple booked.Students man the hallways like traffic cops protecting the facility. No tapping was allowed for practice. There was no area assigned to eat take out food(cafeteria seating was off limits and there were only 2 benches in hallway!)Theatre seating had metal backs, very uncomfortable after 3 day comp! I would highly recommend NOT going back to this venue! Outdated and NOT very accommodating.

We recently participated in an ADA regional. Disappointing overall, seemed amateurish compared to other comps we\'ve attended. Disorganized, many music mess-ups, awards handed to wrong dancers then changed, etc. The MC talked too long at the beginning of awards and addressed the dancers like they were kindergarteners. No photography or video even though the program said there was. We\'ve never been to a comp that did not offer video or photos to purchase. Very poor accommodations for boy dancers! On one day there were nine boy dancers squeezed into two tiny dressing rooms no bigger than walk-in closets. Just ridiculous. Lots of folkloric and ballet; not many studios representing other genres. I hope we don\'t do ADA next year.

Great judging!

Great competition!

Very professional competition year the judging seems very ballet based. The judges seem to enjoy the ballet dances and then harshly score anything that\'s not ballet. A bit disappointing

Only with this once, but it\'s a great experience.

ADA is no joke! One of the few competitions around that will still give out high silvers when necessary. I appreciated that judging is tough but fair. It\'s annoying when competitions will score higher than dancers deserve just to keep them coming back. I enjoyed this competition.

We attended this competition twice last season, (2014), and were generally pleased. However, last year, at one of the competitions we attended, two of the judges had their own choreography adjudicated at the competition that we were at. No surprise, those routines were given special awards and overalls by the other judges. The judge giving the special award made no secret of the fact that the other judge was their really good friend and that they really respected them. The judges actually gave the awards to each other. As much as we understood that this sort of thing can happen at a competition, it made it look biased when the award was being given. The routines were deserving of recognition, however, making note of the fact that one judge was giving it to another judge, and pointing out how close they are outside of the competition, does not look good. It takes away from the credibility of the competition, and that would be too bad because this IS a good competition. The judges should be advised to refrain from making it obvious that they are friends when giving awards.

Attend this competition every year. It\'s generally well run and professional. ADA tends to have such a strong following that we end up seeing the same people every year, which can be good, but gets repetitive at times. There are also some studios and dancers who do as many ADA regionals as possible in order to collect jackets... that can be annoying. Other than that, I think the competition is generally fair and well run. There\'s always ample space in the change rooms and usually a high caliber of dance.

Comp rarely gets judges who can judge ballet. Obvious favoritism to studios. Same kids win special awards-absolutely no effort to spread them out. Say they want age appropriate choreo & costumes-NEVER mark them down though. They looooove the junior & young dancers who can really mug it up.

The regional was well run. I felt as though it was fair and everything ran ahead or on time.

In general I really loved ADA. The scoring was very fair, the judge\'s critiques were awesome, they ran on time or ahead, and they were very positive toward the children. I would definitely consider coming back. HOWEVER - and the reason I have to give away some stars - we were sort of deceived by wording on their website and one of their staff at the regionals that resulted in an unnecessarily long day and a devastated little girl who cried the whole 3 hours home. Their site explains that any category with at least 4 entries will have a first place recognized. It also states each of their level classifications will receive their own high score awards. We took this to mean that since she was in the primary category and there were 4 soloists in that category, there would be a first place announced. Since she performed at 8:30 in the morning and 12 and under high scores weren\'t until 6 pm, the woman there told us she needed to come back, since she already got her adjudicated award at noon, but her high score would be given at the later awards. So we come back (we were keeping track of the other soloists and she was the only gold so she should have won) and - they didn\'t give out her award. The only primary high score awards given were all given out to groups and duo/trios. When I asked someone else (I couldn\'t locate the original woman) what had happened and why they didn\'t give out a primary soloist award (according to their site they should have given out a first place with 4 girls competing), I was told that the primary\'s having their own high scores, meant ALL the numbers in primary and that no soloists had beaten the groups so only the groups were recognized. I\'m sorry but in all my years as a competitor and now teacher, I have never seen a competition that puts group numbers against soloists for high score awards. We stayed for nothing, she went home with nothing, and it was a very sour end to an otherwise great competition day.

We attended a regionals event this year. Very organized, experienced judges, has a 4th judge specially allocated to provide the dancers with special awards. Ran ahead of schedule. They took time during each awards session to recognize each of the dances, including, dancer and choreographer. It was thought out and made each dancer feel special. The judges feedback was relevant and on point. They truly recognize and reward excellent technique. We are looking forward to nationals.

i loved the in10sity of this competition!

Went to a regional for the first time. Pros-well organized, judges have 30 years experience each, they know how to judge each genre, even tap, an individual judge gave out special awards and they really meant something, you could tell she really cared about the dancers, good technique was rewarded, awards were given at a pace where you could understand, ran ahead of time, gave an actual lunch break Cons-the announcer would say \"nice job\", \"great job\" or other personal comments after most dances but not all, that is the thing that can get you into hot water, I would refrain from that all together, some of the awards are confusing, please give a sentence explaining what they are for, I do not know the difference between a choreographer award and a diamond choreographer award, jackets given to the little Young Dancers of the Year are too big for them, overall solo scores were given for teen and senior combined, that should be separate. Overall, a good day. I would vote to go back

We had a fabulous time last year and can\'t wait for Boston.

Overall good and solid. I know they go for the big Broadway experience and it is a nice change to go to NYC, but too crowded and we did not like changing venues for the final day.

We do love this competition, though we have not done their finals as a studio. Their regionals are nearly always fair. I do wish that some of the judges would change between regionals. We found that students who attended multiple regionals got the same judge\'s choice award at each competition. Nice for those students, but it would be better if they had different judges, including special awards judges, at the regional competitions. The special awards judge even mentioned that he had seen a particular dancer at a previous competition and wanted to acknowledge the dancer again. The competition also often runs WAY ahead of schedule. Sometimes as much as an hour. Having competed there several times, we are aware of this and we adjust our schedule accordingly, however, new studios should be aware of this. Overall, we are always happy to attend and hope that the competition continues to improve and maintain its\' stature as one of the best in North America.

Definitely my FAVORITE dance competition!! Always a great competitive atmosphere!

Absolutely love this competition. We do the Regional every year and we do the Nationals everytime it is near us. Critiques are always very useful and judging is very fair.

Ran mostly on time. Excellent critiques, with specific feedback about what needed improvement, and in some cases, what to do to work on it. Results indicated the value of clean execution of technique and stage presence over "tricks." Overall, a great experience.