COMPETITION DETAIL

This was our first time attennding this event. Pros: The stage was fabulous! The size, lighting and sound was top notch. One of the best we have ever performed on. My team loved the fact that we could watch the full video of each dance without having to buy the video. The trophies are very cool and they gave one to each of the dancers in duets and trios, which is a rarity. Cons: Because of block scheduling, the final awards were scheduled for 3pm the day after we danced, which meant we would be making the trip back for overalls. Not a big deal. But, when they say it will start at 3pm they should have stuck to that. Instead they began the overalls at 2:30pm and we missed hearing some of our routines winning overalls, which is a disappointment mainly for the dancers who came but weren't able to receive the honor on stage. The top adjudication is a Standing "O" and sadly the award is actually much smaller then the trophies, which again is minor to adults but big to the kids. The other major downfall was upon arrival being told by a staff member that because there were only a few boys scheduled all weekend, that they did not have a designated dressing room for them. This was not an easy thing to hear for my son who stood with me when I asked about the boys dressing room. My son has always struggled with being the only male on the team and feeling left out of the fun the girls experience when in the dressing room together and prepping for the stage. So to then hear there was nowhere established to dress he really felt defeated before even starting. Overall, our experience was good but those few cons are worth mentioning simply because these competitions charge good money for entering and I feel that money should be better accounted for.

I am a studio owner and we just attended the Omaha event. We were hoping this would work for us, but were very disappointed with this dance competition. First of all, we didn't know who the director was, no one introduced themselves to us. They only provided us with one program even though we brought over 60 routines. Judges were clapping after certain routines which I thought was very unprofessional. On Sunday, we were running an hour ahead and they were pressuring dancers and studio onwers/teachers to have their dancers change fast and get back on stage during quick changes. We were running ahead and we wanted our dancers to take an extra minute to breathe, but the staff kept saying they had to rush through to make their flights later that evening. What if we were running on time? One of the judges was giving out an award and told the dancer to hurry up onstage because she didn't want to miss her flight in front of everyone. Everyone around us gasped and thought it was very unprofessional. We received our critiques and half of our dances don't have any sound, so no critiques. We will never attend this competition again due to their unprofessionalism.

Paid attention to safety details. Kids had a Great Time!