A young old man with only a dream
Mar. 8th, 2005 12:20 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ventaIt's that time of year again, kids. Rapper competition time.
I first went to DERT - the Dancing England Rapper Tournament - in 2000, when it was held in Greenwich. It was a formal competition, each team dancing in front of a panel of judges. The teams were split into two categories, Open and Premier, and there were two competitions per class, Traditional and Evolved.
The most hotly contested prize of the day was the Premier Traditional, which surprised me. In general, I tended to think of rapper dances in two categories - the traditional ones, dances written down decades ago, mostly dull, and the dances you make up yourself (ie evolved) by pinching all the interesting figures from elsewhere. But no, the prize with the most clout was the Premier Traditional. Two teams, Sallyport and the Newcastle Kingsmen were the big players, competing hotly. Which was odd, in a sense - both teams come from Newcastle, both teams practice in the Cumberland Arms in Byker. Most of the dancers were technically members of both teams; rapper is a very incestuous community. Even now, though I can remember very distincly the people who went up to collect the trophy, I can't remember which kit they were wearing, and so which team they were.
(Good heavens, there's still a report of 2000 online. Thank google. I'd forgotten that it went to a tie between the two.)
DERT 2000 was originally intended to be held in the Minellium Dome, but that fell through for some reason. It was held in a large hall somewhere in Greenwich, though competing teams did do displays in the Dome the following day.
In 2001, DERT was held at the Black Sheep Brewery in Masham, and in 2002 in the Kelham Island industrial museum in Sheffield. The format remained the same: one long day of dancing, with each team dancing on a stage, and a long wait in between while the judges wrote down their marks and comments. I remember the Sheffield DERT dragging on and on; people had little to do all day but sit, and wait, and be nervous, and wait some more.
After the competition my team, Mabel Gubbins, went out for a curry. We sat round the table grinning hugely and inanely at each other. "We've got medals!" And we had, too - third in the Open Traditional, and second in the Open Evolved. Admittedly, we had technically come second in Greenwich too, but out of two teams, so there was little glory in that. This time, we'd won them fair and square, against a good few teams. We had medals!
Sadly, we couldn't ride on our glory. By 2003 we could barely get a team together. I'd been hors de combat most of the intervening year with whiplash, and our Number 5 had moved away. DERT 2003 was in Glasgow, and there just weren't enough people prepared to travel that far. Three of us travelled up there, kidnapped someone else whose team wasn't competing, and borrowed one of the judges. We couldn't join the competition, but we danced for a laugh in between the formal rounds.
Rounds, plural. 2003 was a significant year - Clydeside, the host rapper team, changed the rules. Rapper, they said, doesn't get done on stages. It gets done in pubs. On crawls. The competition would, therefore, be a crawl - with a few judges per pub. Glasgow is well served for pubs, and little groups of teams were dispatched on separate tours. Teams were still split into Open and Premier, but there was no further distinction - no separate classes for Traditional or Evolved dancing, just get into the pub and do what you want. In the evening, there was a non-competitive showcase so each team could (if they wanted) get to see all the others.
This formula was repeatedlast year in Bath. I'm sure we competed, but I've got absolutely no memory of, er, anything actually. Oh, except dancing in a really strange pub, on a floor half wood and half concrete, where we had some terrible confusion at the end of the dance about who was supposed to be holding up the swords :) Looking at the results, it seems we came a respectable middle-ish of fourteen teams.
Which brings us to this year. Dert 2005, in Preston. (As someone making an announcement at the weekend said, "I'm sure that website works perfectly so long as you use Microsoft software". It's certainly stuffed under Firefox.)
This year, eveything seemed to go a bit exponential: 27 teams, 16 judges and a staggering 39 pubs were involved. For reference, last year was reckoned to be quite busy with 19 teams. A ferociously complicated itinerary at the weekend saw teams crisscrossing all over Preston: one "warm-up" dance, which wasn't judged, four judged dances, and one outdoor display. Then back to the main hall for a showcase, at which the finalists would be judged.
Finals and so on haven't been necessary before, but this year each team had only seen half the judges during the day, so the remaining eight would judge them at the showcase. Just to keep tension high, no one knew whether they were in the final until after they'd danced.
And, as it turned out, we weren't. I'm slightly unsure how many teams were in the Open, but we didn't make the top six. Usually, there's a real variety of standards in the Open class - everything from nearly-Premier to outright rubbish. This year the overall standard was amazingly high, and I don't think we wuz robbed. When the full marks breakdown is published I'll be curious to see where we did come, though.
I have photos, but this post is already becoming a monster, so I think I'd better save them for another one :)
The last team to dance in the evening show was Black Swan, the golden wünderkinder of the rapper scene. They first appeared at DERT in 2001 where, as a new team (albeit one with some suspiciously familiar faces), they danced in the Open category, and they walked away with the first prize. Since then, they've danced in the premier category and pretty much swept the board each year.
Our first competition dance was in a pub called the Old Vic - we were on straight after Black Swan. Their shiny, new dance looked a little unpractised, and they went wrong at least once. Their dance ends with three of the dancers handspringing forwards out of a circle - but in a cramped pub bar area their Number 3 handsprung out directly onto the judges' table. Broken furniture, broken glass, water and beer flew everywhere - but, in the grand tradition of rapper teams everywhere, they finished the dance.
Never mind, I thought. Everyone cocks up sometimes. Our last competition pub of the day (rather nicely named The New Welcome) saw us dancing with them again, but the crowdedness of the pub meant I couldn't actually see them. The handsprings were cut this time - again, not enough space. I was musing that, fundamentally, the dance wasn't well-suited to a pub environment - but I was looking forward to seeing it in the evening show, where there'd be space.
During the showcase, the Black Swan "B" team - less experienced dancers, dancing the dance which has won the team the last three competitions - were really rather good. I think they came second (dancing in the Open class).
The "A" team lined up, and walked on. Their dance starts with them stepping to the music, very slowly, and then accelerating to dancing speed. I noticed that their Number 1 was barely in time - which was odd, given that he's a professional musician. The dance started, and the problem was rapidly obvious - 1 was drunk to the point of being only just able to walk. It soon fell apart, he let go of a sword handle, turned the wrong way, and everything just broke up. I must admit to being quite relieved, as I'd been kind of dreading watching people landing on their heads on the floor, or similar.
But no, they lined up and started again. I was standing to the side of the stage, and could hear Number 5 snarling out instructions to 1 - "turn left", "cast", "move NOW" sounding increasingly angry. They always dance with a very agressive style, and this time it seemed to be tipping over into the genuine article. But they got no further in this time. Rapper does require a certain degree of concentration, and 1 was hardly up to standing. It all came rapidly to pieces.
Number 3, who, in the face of drunkenness and anger had somehow managed to retain both calm and dignity bowed slightly to the audience and said "We will now leave the stage". If DERT gave out a man of the match award, we agreed he should get it. When the scores were read out, it turned out that the team hadn't even made the finals of their class.
For the past two years or so, it's been a much-debated point: how to break Black Swan's stranglehold on competitive rapper. The answer turned out to be "just wait til they shoot themselves in the foot", and it made for a slightly sour end to the competition. Sallyport triumphantly returned to centre stage, after a gap of a few years, and took the Premier trophy again. I don't think I've seen a bunch of grown men look so completely delighted to be given a cut-glass tankard in, ooh, probably a few years :)
I first went to DERT - the Dancing England Rapper Tournament - in 2000, when it was held in Greenwich. It was a formal competition, each team dancing in front of a panel of judges. The teams were split into two categories, Open and Premier, and there were two competitions per class, Traditional and Evolved.
The most hotly contested prize of the day was the Premier Traditional, which surprised me. In general, I tended to think of rapper dances in two categories - the traditional ones, dances written down decades ago, mostly dull, and the dances you make up yourself (ie evolved) by pinching all the interesting figures from elsewhere. But no, the prize with the most clout was the Premier Traditional. Two teams, Sallyport and the Newcastle Kingsmen were the big players, competing hotly. Which was odd, in a sense - both teams come from Newcastle, both teams practice in the Cumberland Arms in Byker. Most of the dancers were technically members of both teams; rapper is a very incestuous community. Even now, though I can remember very distincly the people who went up to collect the trophy, I can't remember which kit they were wearing, and so which team they were.
(Good heavens, there's still a report of 2000 online. Thank google. I'd forgotten that it went to a tie between the two.)
DERT 2000 was originally intended to be held in the Minellium Dome, but that fell through for some reason. It was held in a large hall somewhere in Greenwich, though competing teams did do displays in the Dome the following day.
In 2001, DERT was held at the Black Sheep Brewery in Masham, and in 2002 in the Kelham Island industrial museum in Sheffield. The format remained the same: one long day of dancing, with each team dancing on a stage, and a long wait in between while the judges wrote down their marks and comments. I remember the Sheffield DERT dragging on and on; people had little to do all day but sit, and wait, and be nervous, and wait some more.
After the competition my team, Mabel Gubbins, went out for a curry. We sat round the table grinning hugely and inanely at each other. "We've got medals!" And we had, too - third in the Open Traditional, and second in the Open Evolved. Admittedly, we had technically come second in Greenwich too, but out of two teams, so there was little glory in that. This time, we'd won them fair and square, against a good few teams. We had medals!
Sadly, we couldn't ride on our glory. By 2003 we could barely get a team together. I'd been hors de combat most of the intervening year with whiplash, and our Number 5 had moved away. DERT 2003 was in Glasgow, and there just weren't enough people prepared to travel that far. Three of us travelled up there, kidnapped someone else whose team wasn't competing, and borrowed one of the judges. We couldn't join the competition, but we danced for a laugh in between the formal rounds.
Rounds, plural. 2003 was a significant year - Clydeside, the host rapper team, changed the rules. Rapper, they said, doesn't get done on stages. It gets done in pubs. On crawls. The competition would, therefore, be a crawl - with a few judges per pub. Glasgow is well served for pubs, and little groups of teams were dispatched on separate tours. Teams were still split into Open and Premier, but there was no further distinction - no separate classes for Traditional or Evolved dancing, just get into the pub and do what you want. In the evening, there was a non-competitive showcase so each team could (if they wanted) get to see all the others.
This formula was repeatedlast year in Bath. I'm sure we competed, but I've got absolutely no memory of, er, anything actually. Oh, except dancing in a really strange pub, on a floor half wood and half concrete, where we had some terrible confusion at the end of the dance about who was supposed to be holding up the swords :) Looking at the results, it seems we came a respectable middle-ish of fourteen teams.
Which brings us to this year. Dert 2005, in Preston. (As someone making an announcement at the weekend said, "I'm sure that website works perfectly so long as you use Microsoft software". It's certainly stuffed under Firefox.)
This year, eveything seemed to go a bit exponential: 27 teams, 16 judges and a staggering 39 pubs were involved. For reference, last year was reckoned to be quite busy with 19 teams. A ferociously complicated itinerary at the weekend saw teams crisscrossing all over Preston: one "warm-up" dance, which wasn't judged, four judged dances, and one outdoor display. Then back to the main hall for a showcase, at which the finalists would be judged.
Finals and so on haven't been necessary before, but this year each team had only seen half the judges during the day, so the remaining eight would judge them at the showcase. Just to keep tension high, no one knew whether they were in the final until after they'd danced.
And, as it turned out, we weren't. I'm slightly unsure how many teams were in the Open, but we didn't make the top six. Usually, there's a real variety of standards in the Open class - everything from nearly-Premier to outright rubbish. This year the overall standard was amazingly high, and I don't think we wuz robbed. When the full marks breakdown is published I'll be curious to see where we did come, though.
I have photos, but this post is already becoming a monster, so I think I'd better save them for another one :)
The last team to dance in the evening show was Black Swan, the golden wünderkinder of the rapper scene. They first appeared at DERT in 2001 where, as a new team (albeit one with some suspiciously familiar faces), they danced in the Open category, and they walked away with the first prize. Since then, they've danced in the premier category and pretty much swept the board each year.
Our first competition dance was in a pub called the Old Vic - we were on straight after Black Swan. Their shiny, new dance looked a little unpractised, and they went wrong at least once. Their dance ends with three of the dancers handspringing forwards out of a circle - but in a cramped pub bar area their Number 3 handsprung out directly onto the judges' table. Broken furniture, broken glass, water and beer flew everywhere - but, in the grand tradition of rapper teams everywhere, they finished the dance.
Never mind, I thought. Everyone cocks up sometimes. Our last competition pub of the day (rather nicely named The New Welcome) saw us dancing with them again, but the crowdedness of the pub meant I couldn't actually see them. The handsprings were cut this time - again, not enough space. I was musing that, fundamentally, the dance wasn't well-suited to a pub environment - but I was looking forward to seeing it in the evening show, where there'd be space.
During the showcase, the Black Swan "B" team - less experienced dancers, dancing the dance which has won the team the last three competitions - were really rather good. I think they came second (dancing in the Open class).
The "A" team lined up, and walked on. Their dance starts with them stepping to the music, very slowly, and then accelerating to dancing speed. I noticed that their Number 1 was barely in time - which was odd, given that he's a professional musician. The dance started, and the problem was rapidly obvious - 1 was drunk to the point of being only just able to walk. It soon fell apart, he let go of a sword handle, turned the wrong way, and everything just broke up. I must admit to being quite relieved, as I'd been kind of dreading watching people landing on their heads on the floor, or similar.
But no, they lined up and started again. I was standing to the side of the stage, and could hear Number 5 snarling out instructions to 1 - "turn left", "cast", "move NOW" sounding increasingly angry. They always dance with a very agressive style, and this time it seemed to be tipping over into the genuine article. But they got no further in this time. Rapper does require a certain degree of concentration, and 1 was hardly up to standing. It all came rapidly to pieces.
Number 3, who, in the face of drunkenness and anger had somehow managed to retain both calm and dignity bowed slightly to the audience and said "We will now leave the stage". If DERT gave out a man of the match award, we agreed he should get it. When the scores were read out, it turned out that the team hadn't even made the finals of their class.
For the past two years or so, it's been a much-debated point: how to break Black Swan's stranglehold on competitive rapper. The answer turned out to be "just wait til they shoot themselves in the foot", and it made for a slightly sour end to the competition. Sallyport triumphantly returned to centre stage, after a gap of a few years, and took the Premier trophy again. I don't think I've seen a bunch of grown men look so completely delighted to be given a cut-glass tankard in, ooh, probably a few years :)
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2005-03-08 10:14 am (UTC)I guess I've known people be "dropped" because they're a bit tipsy - when there are other spare people around who are more competent and reliable. But not at a competition - like I said, it does get taken quite seriously.
I don't think I've known someone drink themselves into incompetence when the team only have five people and thus they're needed.