The first two WRRC Online World Cup weekends have successfully taken place and overcame minor obstacles. We have seen most Acrobatic Rock 'n' Roll (ARR) & Boogie Woogie (BW) couple danceclasses competing so far and a few Girl formations. The possibility has it that this kind of competition will be the state-of-the-art for a bit longer. That is until Corona vaccinations become broadly available and make it possible to get in control of the pandemia. However, not everyone is happy with the online competition format.

The  Online World Cup on October, 24th, kicked off the series of competitions planned by the World Rock 'n' Roll confederation. The Juveniles, Juniors and Main Class Contact Style (MCCS) couples virtually competed, their prepared videos being live judged by a panel of international judges. Among in total sixty-one participants,  Kiara Viktória Brulich & Nimród Ruzics (HUN),  Kitti Szőke & Patrik Toma (HUN) and  Loti Marinko & Jaka Vrevc-Zlajpah (SVN) won the Juv, Jun and MCCS categories, respectively. Find the complete list of results from the October Online WOrld Cup on  the event's pages.

 

Ahead of the first competition, WRRC president Miriam Kerpan Izak expressed her disappointment about the low number of participants, in particular from countries with a well-developed sports structure. From the comments on  Facebook it quickly became clear that dancers, coaches and officials, while appreciating the supporting the format, are in particular unsatisfied with the mixing of ranking lists of Online an Real competitions, in addition to pointing out difficulties in organisational problems due to the pandemia in individual countries. The WRRC reacted promptly such that now separate ranking lists for online and real World Cup are to be found on the webpage of the World Rock 'n' Roll Confederation.



On  November, 7th, the ARR Children (Ch), Couple Dance Show (CDS) and Main Class Free Style (MCFS) gave their virtual debut on the  second Online World Cup. With 26 participants, in the Remote Competition far less competitors sent in their prepared videos, likely in part due to CoVid-19 restrictions becoming reinstated in many places, lowering the opportunities for couples to prepare their videos. Among the successfully sent in choreographies,  Daria Shevtsova & Dmytro Katrenko (UKR),  Zulejka Ubrankovics & Dániel Varga (HUN) and  Anastasia Gusarova & Konstantin Samoylov (RUS) won in the Ch, CDS and MCFS disciplines, respectively. The full list of results can be found on the  competition page. This Online World Cup had shown some technical difficulties as at some point the connection to our receivers at home broke. By providing an alternative link on  YouTube which usually would have been reserved for the judges the problem could be quickly resolved, though.

On the same weekend,  November, 8th, the BW categories Main, Juniors and Seniors performed on the digital stage, as well as the ARR Girl formations. Winning couples were  Mari Munne & Juho Päivinen (FIN),  Diana Leonteva & Fedor Klimov (RUS) and  Clara Joer & Daniel Sinigaglia (FRA) in the said couple danceclasses, respectively. The  Party Team  (HUN) took the lead among the four ARR Girl formations expectedly. Find the full list of results on the  competition page.

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 Couple   Formation   Club   Association

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 Couple   Formation   Club   Association

In the wake of this first Boogie Woogie Online Competition a post by swedish dancer Tobias Ramberg got wide support in the WRRC Athletes' Group - https://bit.ly/3kwcfl5 - on  Facebook. He criticized that to him it seemed that several parts of the shown performances where choreographed, which is the against WRRC rules in regular competitions aside from highlight figures. On top of that he feels it doesn't follow the culture Boogie Woogie dance originates from. Many Boogie Woogie dancers applauded Tobias for his courage to speak out. We'll see whether the WRRC adapts to this critique and whether improvement on this issue is even possible in such online formats.

 

All in all, the Online World Cups seem to be an appreciated format in this special times and will thus be continued in the future until regular competitions can start again. The remaining, scheduled Online Competitions for November  have been postponed until the beginning of december, though, in reaction to the rising CoVid numbers and, in turn, increasingly difficult situation for dancers to practice and record their performances.

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