Sandbagging

You can learn a lot from your competitors and the competitor of choice for Ibrahim seems to be Chris Henzie. Last year, we watched him win novice ballroom at nationals by doing basic syllabus figures. We were shocked and started dramatically simplifying our routines.

This year - a few days ago - Ibrahim looked up Chris's competitive history. It turns out he was a collegiate dancer who started around the same time as I did - 9 years ago. He moved his way up through syllabus and then into open ballroom and latin. However, in 2014, it was like someone hit him on the head and he changed courses abruptly. He started over and went right back to bronze ballroom in amateur (he dropped latin). Since then, he has steadily achieved top places in every category every year at nationals - first bronze, then silver, then gold, then novice. This year he finaled in pre-champ.

In my opinion, it takes a certain amount of humility to completely start over. Most collegiate dancers jump ahead categories before they are ready. Then they get stuck in them forever, repeating mistakes in basic figures and movement principles. However, Chris's strategy could also be what dance federations are trying to eliminate: people competing below their level and then winning at national competitions (i.e. sandbagging). Yet Chris is consistently climbing, so I wouldn't call what he did unethical. I would actually call it smart. Ibrahim and I can't go back to bronze ballroom, because he's already pointed out of syllabus. (I never competed syllabus in amateur, so I could probably do it still.) However, it's an interesting idea, especially if your goal is long-term and you want to improve fundamental technique. If we keep Latin, we might consider doing just that.