Allstar dance seems to have no place in the world. It's not regarded highly in "dance studio" world, and it's largely ignored in the cheer world. What I mean is, take a look in either American Cheerleader magazine or in Dance Spirit magazine and when they list competitions, neither one lists allstar dance competitions.
What are your candid thoughts on allstar dance? Just a way to squeeze some more talent (and money) into cheer gyms? Or is it on the rise? Pace certainly blew worlds up last year...and people seemed to notice for awhile, but now it's dying down.
The weird part is, in "dance studio" competitions, they are allowed to tumble in their routines. In "allstar" competitions, where you'd assume many dancers are also cheerleaders and therefore tumble, USASF says NO TUMBLING!
I love my dance program at my gym. The girls love it too! It gives them more to do at a long day of competition. And it is typically not to much more expensive. If you have second category like dance you can usually compete for $25.00 a member. JAMZ offers the second category for FREE!! Love that! I also love that JAMZ has such strong dance competition.
wow - no response -- give me a chance. In my expericience, and I may get totally flamed for this, but -- I think there is a huge difference between all star dance and studio dance. Yes, I aggee USASF has all but ignored the dance end. I just feel that they must believe there is no money in it. The teams seem to be very locallized. 3 or 4 down in So,. Cal, 1 or 2 in no cal, 1 is Az, 1 in Col. Very few in texas and then a smattering back east, giving compitition amonst teams nil, without lots of travel. There are 3 main categories (pom, jazz, hiphop). And they don't allow for different levels.
Tumbling -- well I see 2 views on this -- 1 if tumbling was totally allowed, I think you would see more "stacking" of teams. Here lets put our main tumbler on this HH team to throw fulls, never mind she can't turn and just stands there and bounces through the rest of the routine. While you have girls that can do ariels and simple tumbling that can dance and are not allowed to throw them. Its a tough call, once you open up the tumbling, what will you get -- Even in studio dance -routines with tumlbing soemtimes are specific categories (open, Hip Hop, Character) and are only allow 2 or 3 tricks max (except Open).
What I have seen this year is an emergance of some studios having both an all star team and a studio comp team (comprised of both girls) (ATD - (aka All that Dance), Chino Valley (aka The Talent Factory), APEX (aka precision dance) -- the seasons are somewhat split (Feb thru July for studio, (dec thru api) for cheer. And in the case of KOB there are 2 studio dance places actually competing this year (Stage 1, and Dellos Dance). It will be very interesting to see how the all star gyms fair against the dance gyms.
As far as worlds go -- last year was the first year, I think it will be a few more years before we see any changes.
Its a tough call -- I don't think it a way for the gym to extract more money -- but it is a way for a gym to involve more of the family. Suzy loves to cheer, but Sally her sister likes to dance -- hey we have a spot for both of them. 1 stop shoping you might say.
That said == I prefer All Star compeitions much better the Studio comps. At least in All Star you know here you stand first place, second place. In Studo you get a rating (gold, platinium) and then your score is thrown in across all of the divisions for final overall ranking. Plus I think the compeititions are lots more fun in all star vs studio. Studio comps are crazy packed.
All around, dance competitions are fielded for dancers....
Dancers who compete usually compete in more than one type of dance (jazz, hip-hop, lyrical-modern, tap, character, etc)
With this, at a studio, they recieve all of the training for the types of dance they wish to do and compete with. Also, with dance compeititons, kids are getting judged by professionals in the art of dance, along with other types of prizes, etc.
I would never dance for a cheer gym. The atmosphere is just so much different.I go to a cheer gym for cheer and a dance studio for dance! Also, with studios, there are a lot of kids and only a select few compete. With this, the competition teams are better. Where as in all star cheer, every competes at different levels.
