All That Jazz Dance Co. had an amazing time in London this past weekend competing in the “En Pointe & Just Dance” dance competition. The competition is truly unique because it has two parts to the competition. The first part of the competition – “En Pointe” – divides participants according to the ballet grade level they are currently studying. The competition has found that by dividing participant’s in this way ensures that dancers compete against dancers of equal ability and has proven to be a more fair experience! Another facet of the festival provides participants a more fair assessment of their performance is the “Technical Element”. Each ballet soloist is asked to perform a required specific step, after their category has completed dancing. The competiiton judges invite the dancers back on stage to perform the step one at a time. It constitutes 10% of the soloists final mark.

At En Pointe & Just Dance they also rank the scores a bit differently. All the dancers receive a charm bracelet when they arrive and for each dance competed they receive a placement charm. The “Just Dance” ranking is self-explanatory — they spell the word “DANCE” with their charms! A “D” charm stands for “Dynamic” and represents a score of 93% and higher. The “A” charm stands for “Awesome” and is for a score of 91.5-92.9%, “N” if for a mark between 90-91.4% and is “Nicely Done”, a “C” charm stands for “Charisma” and is for a mark of 85-89.9% and an “E” charm – “Excellent” – is for 84.9% and under. For the En Pointe ballet portion of the competition your performance is ranked according to names of individuals who have significantly contributed to the ballet world such as Sergei Diaghilev, Anna Pavlova, Vaslav Nijinsky, Celia Franca, and Erik Bruhn. Not only was the competition truly unique but all the dancers at the competition were commended several times for their sportsmanship! The backstage manager said that as kids were coming off stage they were saying “good luck” to the next group and the next group was congratulating the group that just danced! The entire weekend was truly enjoyable and just an all around “nice” competition!

After the success of the Shine Dance Competition in Chatham a few weeks ago ATJ owner and director Lisa Lester-Harris decided to email the conveners of the “En Pointe and Just Dance” competition to see if they would consider coming to Chatham in the future. This past weekend the conveners told Lisa that they will be coming to the Chatham Capital theatre next year! They said that the email was a sign since they had just decided to try and pick up another city for the competition! Chatham it is! What great news for our city!

All That Jazz Scores from En Pointe and Just Dance

All That Jazz Dance Co. had a great time! Not only did the dancers have fun but the scores were ATJ’s best ever! The ATJ dancer’s charm bracelets were full of charms. ATJ received 33 Dynamics (93% and over), 15 Awesome Awards, 8 Nicely Done Awards, and 3 Charisma Awards for their 59 entries. The studio also received 13 Special Awards, 4 Overall High Score Awards and 2 Adjudicators Choice Awards. All the ATJ Dancers did an amazing job!

A special congratulations go out to the following: the ATJ junior competitive team for receiving an Overall High Score for junior group/line with a score of 95.4 for their hip hop number “Fire On the Dancefloor”, the ATJ Force for receiving a score of 95.6 for their tap number “Iko Iko” and Overall High Score for Intermediate Group/Line, the Senior Performance Team for receiving 94.3 and Overall High Score for a Novice Group/Line for their musical theatre number “Be Italian”, ATJ’s Madison Hetherington for receiving 95.4 for her solo “Your Song” and the Overall High Score for Intermediate Soloist, the Teen Competitive Team’s hip hop number “Monster” for receiving Adjudicators Choice for the best Hip Hop at the competition, the Senior Competitive Team’s Modern number “In For the Kill” for receiving Adjudicators Choice for the best Modern number at the competition and the ATJ Fleet for receiving ATJ’s highest mark of 95.85 for their production number “New York” .

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All That Jazz Dance Co.
66 Fourth St.,
Chatham, ON N7M 2G2

allthatjazzchatham@gmail.com