This won't work until competition criteria is better define and scoring system is developed to reflect criteria. -- New England Irish Dancers

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Subject: This won't work until competition criteria is better define and scoring system is developed to reflect criteria.

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Date Posted: 23:54:47 03/17/24 Sun
In reply to: Doable 's message, "One solution would be videotaping local comps and having vids assessed by separate panels of judges. Outlying IP points (say, >=5 ranks away from the average placement across 10 judges for the same dancer) would result in probation of some kind. Thus could be applied at random to feis'/judge (like a tax audit)" on 17:55:18 03/13/24 Wed

As it stands, the life-long exerptise of the judge is what's valued in the scoring. Everyone has a slightly different understanding of what perfect Irish dancing is, and at some levels (Prelim comes to mind), the judges really are left to making their own determination as to what aspect of technique to value more. I agree with some sort of QC system in theory, but not for the system we're currently working with. For example, I judged a prelim a couple years ago where the dancer the two other judges had 1st, I had 11th... Out of like 14. The dancer couldn't treble on time to save their life and I just couldn't get past it, so I marked them accordingly. The other two judges felt the other aspects of their dancing overrode the bad rhythm. I, to this day, vehemently disagree. I can explain with clear reasoning why I did what I did, and I think the other two are insane for overlooking the rhythm issues the way they did. However, on an "audit" based solely on math, I look like I don't know what I'm looking at. But I do.
Now, if scoring could more to a more categorized system with actual marks allocated for different aspects of dancing, that could work, and I think is probably the way we need to go, if Irish dancing is to move forward being taken seriously as a sport. BUT, with it, comes a whole bunch of other alternations to competition format, which would get people complaining for a whole host of other reasons. The other problem (as has happened in figure skating), is people then start choreographing "to the scoresheet" as opposed to using artistic judgement to determine what looks good. It will lead Irish dancing to become even more cookie cutter and generic--in the name of scoring points. I think that flies in the face of what a folk dance form is...

You really can't win here.

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