Emerald Ball 2013

The Ballroom

Just completed four days of an intense dance competition at the LAX Hilton Airport Hotel.  This year was a big one for the Emerald Ball.  With over 15,000 entries, hordes of competitors filled every crevice of the ballroom, making it oppressively congested and claustrophobic.  Wayne Eng is the genius with this Dancevision enterprise that made all of this happen.  

This unfortunately is not a good example of the crowding.  When really
crowded, there was no room to even take a decent picture.

Some competitions provide more competition than others. At the Heritage, many of my heats were contested but not nearly as much as Emerald.  Indeed, at Emerald, some heats would start with semifinals, others with quarter finals.  And the competition among the women was an order of magnitude larger...it was quite amazing!  Basically, where you end up on the list of competitors is a decent indication of where you are nationally, give or take a few places up or down.  That is the positive of this event.  And there were other positives as well.

But at this moment, I'm pretty exhausted and drained.  My tank is empty; I feel like someone pulled the plug from the intertube of my circulatory system, forcing blood to gush out, powerless to react. My body has deflated into an amorphous mess of mush, tattered and battered flesh and hot inflamed joints.

So I will set my mind at ease at least for tonight, the last night of the event.  There will be a wonderful dinner, a magnificent professional show and perhaps a few rising star and professional competitions.  I need to shower, put on my suit, get down to the bar, and hope that alcohol will replenish the vitality back into my being, or at the very least act as a surrogate to the blood that is now somewhere seeping through the floor boards of my room hopefully not raining down on the occupants below.

There is actually a lot to write about this competition. If I live another day, I will tell some of the stories.  If not, you will have to settle for this introduction knowing that you can look at the website and check the results of the Divino Ritmo students at anytime...they are all posted for the world to see.

Maybe I will have the energy to take a few more choice pictures to post.  More likely, I will sit at the professional show, content with the week's work and fun, pretending to concentrate on the wonderful dancing in front of me, while drifting quietly into an inebriated state of oblivion as my eye lids weigh down my eyes, while feeling safe and content in this strange world of competitive ballroom dancing.