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Review: ADZ 2019

Medha

Member
Messages
5
Hey BTF!

With all the threads that have been posted these past few weeks, we wanted to make our review of ADZ as comprehensive as possible. We really enjoyed our experience this past weekend at ADZ 2019 and with any hiccup noted below, we’ve tried to come up with a possible solution.

Starting from pre-comp preparation, the ADZ board was really good with reminding teams about upcoming deadlines and they were extremely approachable if we ever needed to get an extension or had issues we needed to figure out. One thing we kind of missed was having a generic timeline of the weekend before the weekend started so we felt like we didn’t really know what to expect/were kind of unprepared for the weekend. Normally, we have a captains + liaison chair video call the week or two weeks before the competition just to run down the itinerary for the weekend. This could help with logistics on teams’ ends as well so that would definitely be something to look into for next year. If not a conference call, because I know how tedious it can be to get all the captains together, just a simple packet outlining the timeline, locations of mixer/practice spaces, etc. would have been really helpful. We found ourselves walking back and forth from the hotel to different practice spaces quite a bit and we know we could have spent that time better- practicing more, getting ready, etc. Also walking around in vardiyan in the snow is just frustrating haha so we could have also had the chance to better prepare ourselves. Secondly, we never had a judges’ meeting before the competition. Our team did not have any specific questions to address at the time that we were asked to come up with questions because we had assumed that a meeting was going to happen where the rubric was reviewed and the floor opened for questions- as with many other competitions. However, we weren’t told that because we didn’t have any questions, there would be no meeting at all. We felt that if that was the consequence of not having any questions, we definitely would have asked basic questions just to have that face time with the judges pre-comp to hear general things they look for/dislike in a set. The rubric was straight forward, though, so it wasn’t hard to follow.

Our team had a great time at the mixer and the food was great- can never go wrong with biryani! Tech time was delayed by about 40-45 min, which kind of hurt us in the end. By the time we got back to the hotel, it was around 3pm and we were asked to be at the venue by 5:30pm. Our girls were able to get ready in time, but our guys BARELY made our show time. I guess one way to fix this in the future is to just let teams know if things are getting delayed and by how much, that way teams can make informed decisions on what the next move should be. Our practice space after tech time was a good 20-25 min walk (maybe we were taken on a different route, but we were told it was only supposed to be 5-6 min?) from the hotel. If we had known how delayed things were and the actual distance between venues, we would have probably sent our guys back to the hotel to start getting their paghan tied as soon as possible. It all worked out in the end and the ADZ board was definitely accommodating of our situation. Our liaisons were extremely helpful during this time, so we really appreciated that!

The competition itself ran super smoothly! Being a Bhangra and Fusion comp, we didn’t necessarily expect for smoothness, but we were very impressed with how well the ADZ board ran the show. We also feel super privileged to have been judged by Umer Quereshi, Eshann Toteja, and Aditya Dewanjee. We received some valuable feedback from them and we really appreciate how detailed they were with every point they made- definitely one of our best judging experiences we’ve had. We want to thank the ADZ board for the research they did in finding these three judges and we hope the board chooses as helpful of judges in years to come.

Our team had a blast at the after party- it was a great end to a great weekend. We are really grateful for the post-comp communication that the ADZ board has been leading this week and we look forward to continue working with them these next few weeks. Just some miscellaneous things- we really appreciated the hospitality at ADZ and the hotel was definitely aware of the happenings of the weekend, which made things like noise complaints a lot less stressful.

Overall, ADZ 2019 was such a fun experience for our team and we hope to have the chance to compete in Madison again in the future!

- Medha (Spartan Bhangra)
 
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