Dear Dancers, Trainers and Officials!
The announcements for the first online competition are over and I must admit that, as WRRC President, I am a little disappointed regarding the number of announced couples and countries, especially in the Main Class Contact style category.
When we presented the WRRC online competitions project during the WRRC Online GM, I had a feeling that all the countries were interested for this project and couples were motivated to take part.
I see now that the reality is not the same. The number of announced dancers is far below our (or at least my) expectation. It seems that you are sending us a message that you do not feel these competitions are important and that trainers and officials in some countries haven’t encouraged the dancers to take part.
I’m well aware that in this »new reality« we experience different training conditions, different possibilities to have competitions, to access the training halls and to practice sports overall, but for me taking part on WRRC international event should be a motivation for each couple and formation.
Being there means we respect each other, that we give a chance to compete internationally also for all the dancers from the countries where »live events« are not possible. I miss couples from countries which have the best possibilities for training and competition, I miss engagement from national federations to promote this online series as something important.
Also, as our Sports director informed me, there are quite some cases where the federations claimed that international judges don’t have the required technical conditions which I find really hard to believe. I’m sure everyone has a computer at home and all the federations have electronic judging, so for sure you could provide a tablet for a judge as you do for your own events.
Following the numbers of Covid-19 cases all over Europe, it looks this will be our reality over this winter and even longer. The online events will be the only chance for couples from different countries to compare their skills in the upcoming months.
The WRRC Presidium prepared many motivation tools for couples to take part, so I really don’t understand why we couldn’t attract more dancers:
- Special WRRC online ranking
- Prize money for Main class categories
- Gifts for other categories
- Of course, and maybe this was not so clear, these events will count also for the regular »running« rankings which count for extra quotas for championships.
There are no borders for online events, no travel restrictions, no expensive trips and hotels, just a will and motivation to dance. The working group behind this project spent numerous hours preparing everything, in the process everyone encouraged us, so we were really looking forward to welcome many dancers.
I wish and hope all of you will think again and decide to take part on our next events. In the current situation the online events bring the equal possibility for everyone to take part, a live event would just limit the list of possible countries and dancers to a minimum.
Perhaps even in the future we will combine live and online events and with this combination widen the possibilities for all dancers to take part.
Last but not least, I want to congratulate everyone who will take part on this first competition. Recording these videos proved to be more challenging than expected.
Good luck to all participants who will be online next weekend and I’m keeping my fingers crossed that the numbers will increase when the online series proceed.
WRRC President
Miriam Kerpan Izak
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World Rock’n’Roll Confederation
www.wrrc.dance
