Harvest Moon Melee, Conclusions
Posted by spectaprod on October 4, 2007
Saturday night competitions at HMM 2007 included the Lindy Hop Jam, Social Dance (Jack and Jill) Finals, and Non Swing. The non-swing was most definitely the highlight event of the weekend. Hilarity was the m.o. and many a team brought that to the table.
The Lindy Hop Jam was the redux version of the Charleston Jam from Friday night, albeit with more appropriate music. As with the Lindy Hop, there were some very impressive moments. I fondly recall the team antics of OCD, Big George, and especially the Tiny Bunch. After Battle of the Cities I had intended to orchestrate some group play, but completely forgot until the nights of. ah well.
The Social Dance Finals were typical Jack and Jill jam style Finals, the exception being that the couple from prelims were judged and qualified for finals as a couple. The dancing was good and tight, and a who’s who of Atlanta and especially Big George. If I recall right, of 7 couples, 4 had a Big George member and there were 6 total Atlanta representatives.
I most impressed, throughout the whole weekend, with how the non-swing was accomplished. Each team randomly drew a genre of music (a la So You Think You Can Dance). The first round was preceded with 50 minutes of time to work on things, then performance. The second round music was drawn at the conclusion of the first round, and teams had approximately 5 minutes to prepare for that. Creativity was certainly the name of the game, especially for round two as there was hardly any time to put something together – it was nearly contact improv.
The scoring of the weekend went thusly. Teams were given relative placement for each event by the judges. Those placements were then grouped together for the weekend, as relative placements as if each contest had been a judge. And viola – the winners:1st Big George Savoy Bouncers, 2nd Tiny Bunch, 3rd Swing Blade(s of Glory). We (SBG) were quite surprised and thrilled to have placed at all. We had three goals going into HMM. 1) Have fun 2) Avoid Injuries 3) Place higher than last. We accomplished 1 and 2 as well.
