Category Selection

“The only way to make sense of change is to plunge into it, move with it, and join the dance.”

-Alan Watts

Selecting the correct category to place your dance under is vital to the message you want your routine to display. It’s not as simple as one may think. You cannot just throw a lyrical into a jazz category, hip-hop into musical theatre, or mistake a ballet for contemporary. There is a difference between clogging and tap, large group and line, and teen and senior. Dances need to make sense in the category they are placed in to keep judging standard and equal across all divisions, styles and ages.

The choreography was most likely given to fit a select amount of dancers. The style was made to reflect what the dancers perform best under the category. For example, a jazz routine can be either sassy, fierce, funk, creepy, classical, slow, fast, etc. However you have to be careful that if it is under the jazz category, it is straight jazz. Yes you may get away with a street jazz, but in all honesty a street jazz is hip-hop. Same goes for a Broadway jazz, where the style could have fit better under the musical theatre division. It is also important to note the difference between jazz and lyrical, which is especially confused in dance team, when they are not filtered into the correct categories. At the high school level there are two separated categories of lyrical and jazz, and a lot of teams incorrectly place their lyrical into the jazz category, and get away with it. Another thought about distinguishing styles is the question of contemporary. Contemporary is pretty much a cross of lyrical and jazz elements, but combined to form a new interesting piece. Contemporary may lean toward a more jazz side, or lyrical side, so a choreographer should be precise on whether the style is lyrical, jazz or contemporary when registering it under a style.

Please place your dance in the correct division, style and age category. It makes judging fairer in an already opinionated sport. It can be easy to misjudge the style of dance, so if it’s questionable you should look for multiple opinions, from multiple backgrounds. You want the message of your dance to be displayed properly to the audience, and one step to making that happen is by placing the dance under the correct category.

~Julia Brewer