The Concept of Judging with a “Soft” or “Hard” Eye

Using the “Soft” Eye:

Judging with the soft eye means to use your internal experience and your trained instinct.
Through many years of training, the connection between mind and eye get an instinct to just catch:

1. The characteristic look and form
2. The flow of movement
3. The characteristic movement

There are three mental states of how to use the soft eyes to observe the situation:

1. Take your position on the floor to be aware of the whole room.
2. You are sensing and feeling how the couples “take” the floor and move into the space.
3. Some couples are catching your soft eye so that your instinct can say “yes” or “no” without questioning yourself.

The soft eye is used in the first rounds when there are 10 or more couples on the floor.

Using the “Hard” Eye

The “hard” eye is assessing the abilities of the couple in comparison to your visualisation of the ideal dancing.

The state of the mind for the hard eye is to focus deeper on exclusive details in order to evaluate the performance, which is creating the foundation for your judgement.

The “hard” eye is used from quarter final, based on the components of the judging system 3.1:

1. Technical Quality
2. Movement to Music
3. Partnering Skills
4. Choreography and Presentation

For the “Soft” as well as the “Hard” eye, the place you chose to observe from as well as your Body Language have a huge influence on what you see and therefore on your decisions.

1 Technical Quality

1. “Breathing Posture” to create a balanced Dance Hold:
   • How well are the gravities of head – chest – arms – hands released into the ankle into the floor?
   • How well is the rebounce of the gravities used to let the reaction from the floor fulfill the body?
     How well do the energy and activities between the base, chest, head, arms and hands relate to each other?
   • Which levels of sensing and feeling are used to produce the touch, volume, design of characteristic form and leading/following to create the dance hold and to prepare for movement into space?
2. The couple in movement
   • How well are the base and the upper part coordinated to create harmony in the “breathing” movement?
   • What is the level of mechanics in the base?
     Use of feet and ankle? Knee? Hip bone? Pelvis? Lower spine?
   • What is the level of mechanics in the upper part of the body?
3. à Impulse to “lead”
   à Absorb and respond

2 Partnering Skills

1. Man’s tasks:
   • Create the space for the woman
   • Sense and feel the need of the woman
   • Impulse to give the women the start of a time value
   • Decision of a direction for the movement in the room
   • Impulse to design the characteristic movement
   • Sensing the other couples in the room to create and change direction to master “floorcraft”
2. Woman’s tasks

• Absorb and Respond
• Gives allowance and inspires the man leave his supporting leg to move on

3. Feel and sense
4. The touch
5. Time value between man and woman

3 Movement to Music

The music:

1. Beat
2. Flow and your own body rhythm
3. Rhythm of the music
4. Melody
5. Musicality

4 Choreography and Presentation

1. Choreography is the art of designing sequences of movements of physical bodies that fit the character of the respective dance.
   Telling a story and being fulfilled by expressing different emotions and intensities of the music.
2. What do I expect from a good choreography?
   • correct direction in the room and space
   • movements fitting together to create the continuity of the flow
   • ???? to create the partnership in the choreography
   • to use the phrasing of the music to build up highlights and show changes of intensity
   • contrasts of the story
3. Choreography with structures
   Characterisation
4. Presentation
   • Presenting the individuality of the couple to the audience
   • How you are presenting the choreography in the space
   • Invite and create the dialogue with the partner and the audience
   • Drawing the attention and communicate with the audience
   • The characteristic look
   • The use of flow and energy levels in different dances
   • Personal feeling
   • Whole “professional package”
   • How to walk on the floor – how to end and go out of the floor

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May be of later use:

• 3^rd state: Opening up the inner space of your body and mind to sense the total motion and emotion of the room so that you have total awareness of the hall.
• 2^nd state: eyes are observing the activity on the floor.
  framing or focussing my awareness to what is happening on the floor.
• 1^st state: the eyes are drawn to a particular couple

judging is to be in a 2^nd position 3^rd position

trainer is in 2^nd position and 1^st position