All the King's horses
Apr. 12th, 2010 11:05 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ventaOn Friday, I said I was off to compete in the national (nay, international) rapper-dancing competition. And that we were just going along for the fun of it, having not practised particularly intensively, and that we'd just sit back and enjoy the weekend.
Well, as it happened, we did enjoy it. Mostly. I didn't enjoy Friday night at all, as I got unexpectedly car-sick on the way up and tottered round Derby sipping mineral water and wishing I could just be in bed. But the weekend was very well organised by the Monkeys and everyone else enjoyed all of it.
On Saturday morning I didn't feel hugely better, and I'm going to blame vague ill-health for a selection of peculiar mistakes I made throughout the day. Sneaking in a quick practice before everything kicked off, it was noted that I'd lost the ability to grab hold of the correct swords when the lock comes down. The "lock" is a star-shape made of the five swords and held up to general acclamation. Grabbing your own sword-handles afterwards is pretty important - if you don't, then you end up clutching someone else's hand while a spare sword goes flapping free. This is Very Bad - and getting it right is one of the most basic and fundamental things. I've been doing it weekly, without thinking, for more than a decade, but on Saturday morning I got it wrong three times running. To add to the worry, during this practice dancer #3 accidentally punched #4 in the face, splitting her lip.
We shuffled concernedly to our "warm-up" pub (the first dance is never judged), and managed a dance which was largely error-free... so long as you don't consider me smacking #3 with a sword and splitting her forehead open an error :(
In the first competition pub ("The Flowerpot", nowhere near as cutesy as its name suggests) I felt it must be my turn for a blood injury, but mercifully we'd apparently got all our damage out of the way early. We danced for two stoney-faced judges, bought lovely slabs of huntsman's pie from behind the bar and got on with it. Like last year, the simple tour route was made unfeasibly complicated by terminology (we were tour 5, cycle 1, proceeding anti-clockwise) but fortunately a nice lady called Sophie herded us all along from one place to the next. Baaa! We liked Sophie.
Four more competition dances (and awful lot of hanging about) later, we were in the Guildhall thinking that actually, we could probably relax now. I'd made at least two more howling errors (one of which I corrected silently, and indeed the rest of the team wouldn't have noticed except I apparently turned vaguely grey with terror). The evening rapper extravaganza was still to come, but actually we were the first team on - so we danced, got it over with, and hit the gin.
Well, I didn't hit the gin as I was still feeling quite fragile. Instead I snuck away from the wall-to-wall rapperama and met![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
marjory and dr_mitch for a pint. Owing to issues of timing and proximity, we ended up in a pub with a poor selection of beer, and I'd ordered a pint of Grolsch before I remembered that I wasn't supposed to be drinking because I was still Feeling Awful. Having spent a thoroughly enjoyable 45 minutes or so chatting to them and drinking my pint, I promptly felt absolutely fine, suggesting that all that was wrong with me was that I was a few drinks behind.
Meanwhile, back in Derby's Guild Hall, the dancing had stopped and the little hall was crammed with people waiting for the results. The individual awards were given out (best musician, best character (which always affronts me because I always disagree violently with the voting), best song). Then we were on to the Open (which is the lower of the two classes). Third, Rapper Rascals from York; rounds of applause, the Rascals can be heard whooping. Second, Mabel Gubbins; rounds of applause, absolutely no sound from Mabels (that's us) who are all sitting stunned and saying thing like "what?" and "are you sure?". When asked later, I had no idea who had actually won the Open because I was still too busy exuding bafflement.
Having got over the initial "eh??" I think I have an answer. One of the main things a rapper team is judged on is the excitement and buzz a dance generates. A thing we've noted in other years is that it can happen that you go into a competition pub, find it empty, and have a terrible time generating any kind of buzz whatsoever. If the team you're touring with is uninterested (or leaves after their dance), it's even worse. For the whole competition tour, we were paired with the Newcastle Kingsmen: bad boys extraordinaire of the rapper world, and eventual winners of the Premier class. In each pub they and their entourage politely watched us dance, clapped and cheered in all the right places and generally acted like a large and enthusiastic audience, complimenting us each time we came off. We, in turn, danced better because we had an audience - it's hard to really pull out a shining performance when you're dancing to two judges and a bloke at the bar with his nose in the racing news. I seriously think that this is what got us up into the rankings this year; cheers, Kingsmen.
Well, as it happened, we did enjoy it. Mostly. I didn't enjoy Friday night at all, as I got unexpectedly car-sick on the way up and tottered round Derby sipping mineral water and wishing I could just be in bed. But the weekend was very well organised by the Monkeys and everyone else enjoyed all of it.
On Saturday morning I didn't feel hugely better, and I'm going to blame vague ill-health for a selection of peculiar mistakes I made throughout the day. Sneaking in a quick practice before everything kicked off, it was noted that I'd lost the ability to grab hold of the correct swords when the lock comes down. The "lock" is a star-shape made of the five swords and held up to general acclamation. Grabbing your own sword-handles afterwards is pretty important - if you don't, then you end up clutching someone else's hand while a spare sword goes flapping free. This is Very Bad - and getting it right is one of the most basic and fundamental things. I've been doing it weekly, without thinking, for more than a decade, but on Saturday morning I got it wrong three times running. To add to the worry, during this practice dancer #3 accidentally punched #4 in the face, splitting her lip.
We shuffled concernedly to our "warm-up" pub (the first dance is never judged), and managed a dance which was largely error-free... so long as you don't consider me smacking #3 with a sword and splitting her forehead open an error :(
In the first competition pub ("The Flowerpot", nowhere near as cutesy as its name suggests) I felt it must be my turn for a blood injury, but mercifully we'd apparently got all our damage out of the way early. We danced for two stoney-faced judges, bought lovely slabs of huntsman's pie from behind the bar and got on with it. Like last year, the simple tour route was made unfeasibly complicated by terminology (we were tour 5, cycle 1, proceeding anti-clockwise) but fortunately a nice lady called Sophie herded us all along from one place to the next. Baaa! We liked Sophie.
Four more competition dances (and awful lot of hanging about) later, we were in the Guildhall thinking that actually, we could probably relax now. I'd made at least two more howling errors (one of which I corrected silently, and indeed the rest of the team wouldn't have noticed except I apparently turned vaguely grey with terror). The evening rapper extravaganza was still to come, but actually we were the first team on - so we danced, got it over with, and hit the gin.
Well, I didn't hit the gin as I was still feeling quite fragile. Instead I snuck away from the wall-to-wall rapperama and met
marjory and dr_mitch for a pint. Owing to issues of timing and proximity, we ended up in a pub with a poor selection of beer, and I'd ordered a pint of Grolsch before I remembered that I wasn't supposed to be drinking because I was still Feeling Awful. Having spent a thoroughly enjoyable 45 minutes or so chatting to them and drinking my pint, I promptly felt absolutely fine, suggesting that all that was wrong with me was that I was a few drinks behind.Meanwhile, back in Derby's Guild Hall, the dancing had stopped and the little hall was crammed with people waiting for the results. The individual awards were given out (best musician, best character (which always affronts me because I always disagree violently with the voting), best song). Then we were on to the Open (which is the lower of the two classes). Third, Rapper Rascals from York; rounds of applause, the Rascals can be heard whooping. Second, Mabel Gubbins; rounds of applause, absolutely no sound from Mabels (that's us) who are all sitting stunned and saying thing like "what?" and "are you sure?". When asked later, I had no idea who had actually won the Open because I was still too busy exuding bafflement.
Having got over the initial "eh??" I think I have an answer. One of the main things a rapper team is judged on is the excitement and buzz a dance generates. A thing we've noted in other years is that it can happen that you go into a competition pub, find it empty, and have a terrible time generating any kind of buzz whatsoever. If the team you're touring with is uninterested (or leaves after their dance), it's even worse. For the whole competition tour, we were paired with the Newcastle Kingsmen: bad boys extraordinaire of the rapper world, and eventual winners of the Premier class. In each pub they and their entourage politely watched us dance, clapped and cheered in all the right places and generally acted like a large and enthusiastic audience, complimenting us each time we came off. We, in turn, danced better because we had an audience - it's hard to really pull out a shining performance when you're dancing to two judges and a bloke at the bar with his nose in the racing news. I seriously think that this is what got us up into the rankings this year; cheers, Kingsmen.
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Date: 2010-04-12 11:12 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-04-12 11:24 am (UTC)