Secondary Research
Underneath outlines my 5 questions that I will be looking at mostly to develop my idea, these five questiosn will help me shape my documentary and give it a layout in terms of what to film.
1. When was dance classified as a Sport?
Dance is on the PE curriculum with the other area's of sports like athletics, gymnastics, games and so on. I found this information from a curriculum online websites where it also tells you what each of the area's do to the overall PE curriculum. Quoted by the website, 'Dance is to encourage children to improve their body management skills, to understand movement, to work with others and to develop creativity and imagination.'
http://www.curriculumonline.ie/en/Primary_School_curriculum/Physical_Education/
2. Why should dance be considered in The Olympics?
A source I have looked at has shown many people's opinions on this topic dancers and non dancers. The overall interpretation is that 'dancers are athletes, so if they are athletes then they should be apart of the Olympics which celebrates athletes.' As many people have said that dancers from all different backgrounds already compete and win Gold, Silver and Bronze. This links to the point that so do runners i.e there are small running comeptitions to see who is the best in the borough/country but it is the Olympics which allows the world to known who is the best in the world.
The link Below shows some different opinions on why 'dance should be considered in the Olympics. Whether for the topic or against they all have valid points and reasons.
My next reasoning that answers this question is going back to the topic dancers being athletes as in the Merriam Webster Dictionary it defines the word 'athlete' as a person who is trained or skilled in exercises, sports or games requiring physical strength, agility or stamina. According to this definition, a dancer is an athlete. Warm up exercises are a required so dancers do not pull their muscles. To jump high off the ground you need agility and strength. A dancer also requires stamina in order to take part in a dance production that could last upto 1hour and a half. Underneath shows a screen grab of the definition of an 'Athlete' in the dictionary.
3. Who decides what sports are put into the Olympics?
There are a number of people who choose what sports are put in the olympics, whether its the sport in the winter olympics or summer olympics and this is down to the international committee called the IOC. The international committee establishes the hierarchy of the sports. There are many governing bodies for example the International Swimming Federation who are in charge of all water sports. The committee choses which sports will be in the Olympics and they do this by analysing how many countries currently participate in it and if there are enough athletes to do the event. The Olympic committee also add two sports every time the Olympics are held through different country locations. These two sport events that are held are genially not main sporting events.
Most of this information I gathered about the international IOC was from the web link below.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olympic_sports
Gathering more information from my web searches I started to understand how the Olympic Committee decides what sports are put into the Olympics and it is simply through the widening of the sport. What I been by this is how many people practise the sports, for an event to be held at the Olympics there needs to be at least 75 different countries doing it, including the four continents. These stats are only see through the male prospective and is different to women as for the sport to be chosen there needs to be at least 40 different countries participating from a females outlook and three continents may wish to be included. So for an event to be held at the Olympics the committee look at how widely the sport is practiced. Under I quote information seen from a different source which relates back to my question.
'An event, being a competition in an Olympic sport or in one of its disciplines and resulting in a ranking, gives rise to the award of medals and diplomas. To be included in the Program, an event must, first and foremost, enjoy a recognized position internationally in both numerical and geographical terms and have featured at least twice in world or continental championships. Sports, disciplines or events in which performance depends essentially on mechanical propulsion are not acceptable.'
http://www.olympic.org/ioc
4. How does dance compare to other existing olympic sport events i.e syncorinzied swimming, floor gymastics, figure skating?
Comparison Through Figure Skating & Dancing
I found an interesting article by Meagan a dancer and she compares dance to figure skating which is infact a sporting event at the olympics.Figure Skating is not seen at every Olympic event as it is a winter sport so is seen every 8years. She says, as I quote her words 'Dance involves movement of the body, which makes it physical like a sport. Like figure skating' This shows a comparision between dance and Figure skating as they more use the same technique which is the movement within the body and also makes it very physical and demanding.
Another quote from the same source that I find interesting is that there are many simalarities that connect the figure skating with dancing.
'While dance is often considered artistic, skating also values artistic elements, even considering them in half of the judging score. Both dance and figure skating are usually done to music, which plays an integral role in the performance. Finally, like Olympic figure skating, dance can be done solo and in pairs. With all of these similarities, it starts to seem that skating is simply dancing on ice.' Underneath I have displayed the link where I have recieved this information from and it also has much more deep throughts into the topic and how much the two sports are related.
Expert Opinion
Another source I have seen via the internet is the comparison between Figure skatinga and Gymnastics which I would like to link to dance. 'Figure skating is very simular to artistic gymnastics' which I quote Beth Tweedle who is from the UK's Olympic Gymnast squad. Quoting what Beth Tweedle said who is a three time olympian and was also the first british gymnast to have ever won a medal at the European Championships. World Championships, or the Olympic Games and is considered to be the most successful Britsih Gymast of all time.
Beth said; 'In some ways, figure skating is very similar to my sport, artistic gymnastics. Like in gymnastics, skaters require a good technical and artistic base as well as some serious confidence. These skills are something that I needeed when I'm going into my tumbling passes and series of jumps, in the floor event.' This reverts back to the similarities dance has with Figure skating and Gymnastics. As dance requries a lot of courage to do tricks as the move dance evolves the more danegrous tricks are being made up i.e do back flips off people's chests and also do flips over people.
Simalarities between the laying out of each of the competitons:
What also connects dance and gymastics is the different area's you ahve in gymastics which are listed below:
Artistic Gymnastics (Men/Women)
Rhythemic Gymastics
Womens Beam
Mens Horizontal Bar
Womens Floor Exercise
and are more shown to the right in the screen grab.
Which reflect on my point that dance is simular to Gymnastics as it also has different elements i.e
Street Dance has many dance styles:
Hip Hop
House
Breaking
Waacking
Locking
Popping
Modern Dance also has different sub dance styles being:
Tap
Ballet
Contempary
Jazz
Salsa
Ballroom
There are also different ways dance is judge and this can be seen throughout street dance and modern dance i.e:
Solo
Duo
Group (5-7)
Crews (5-22)
This relates to the driving as in the London Olympics just gone we saw many different categories which were solo, duo and group.
Gymnasts train in dance first
Another source I have come across is by a guardian writer called Judith Mackrell and she talks about how most successful gymnasts train in dance before going into Gymnastics and most still do to help with the ariel choreography. She also gives examples of Gymnasts who ahve previously trained in dance as I quote her words underneath.
'Some of the world's most famous dancers, Sylvie Guillem and Sergei Polunin included, started out as gymnastic prodigies; many of today's Olympians have trained with ballet masters and mistresses in order to hone their elegance of phrasing and line.' I like this source as it shows that dance is an important part to most sporting events and not just in Gymnastics, it is also seen in figure skating. It also shows that dance is something taht makes the gymnastic pieces more interesting and if they ahve judging criteria for that then surely it must be easy to do the same for just a dance based Olympic event.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/2012/aug/06/gymnastics-olympics-2012-dance
5. How is floor gymastics and sycorinized swimming judge?
I have researched 'floor exercise' which is known as the most dance related gymastic apparatus. This event is simply judge on a 90second piece which is a 'choregraphed routine which composes of acrobatic and dance elements.' Looking at the elements that the floor exercise reqires is very simular to a dancers competition and hwo they would judge i.e after looking at the information recieved from wikipediea, a gynmast uses proffesional choregraphers to make their routine up just like a dancer would and are allowed any song by choice just with no spoken word content.
Floor Exercise is judge from four factors and these are the difficulty of the performance for example the routine hhow difficult it was, or the tumble, did they do a back tuck into a fulls sequence or did they stick to something basic. Artisty, demonstration of required elements which is just reflecting on the required elements how did they demonstarte them? The last point is their overall performance quality. Their are also deducation;
'Deductions are taken for poor form and execution, lack of required elements, and falls. The gymnast is expected to use the entire floor area for his or her routine, and to tumble from one corner of the mat to the other. Steps outside the designated perimeters of the floor incur deductions. The gymnast will also incur a deduction if there are lyrics in the music'
I found all this information through the wikipedia website which is listed below:
Judging At The Olympics:
The judging at the Olympics is a bit more simple than all those other competitions in Gymnastics they score it soley on difficulty and execution with the falt of your penalities. I gathered this infromation from the Olympic results website which tells you the scroes of each gymnast and what made their performance better.
 |
http://www.london2012.com/gymnastics-artistic/event/women-floor-exercise/index.html
How are Synchronized Swimming judge
After looking on the internet I have found a website that explains to me how the Synchronized swimming is judge which has been put together by the FINA relgations.Synchronized swimming is judge through a scale from 0-10 and its spilt into diffrent sections these sections and these sections are all based on the performance and you need to get the highest mark out of 10 to recieve the best possible score. Underneath shows the breakdown of how they score the performances: |
0 Completely failed
0.1-1.9 Hardly recognizable
2.0- 2.9 Very weak
3.0- 3.9 Weak
4.0- 4.9 Deficient
5.0- 5.9 Satisfactory
6.0- 6.9 Competent
7.0- 7.9 Good
8.0- 8.9 Very good
9.0- 9.4 Excellent
9.5- 9.9 Near perfect
10 Perfect
Underneath shows the link that I got the infromation from and all the information I recieved.
Different Panels
I have also found out more information from a different source about the scoring system but this is abit different as it goes through who judges what for example there is one panel of judges that judge the execution of the technical routine with the required elements.Then there us another panel that look at the 'overall impression: choreography, synchronisation, difficulty and manner of presentation.'. So as we now know there are two different sets of judges they both look at different things. 'In the free routine, the technical merit judges score the difficulty and execution of strokes/movements as well as the synchronisation of the swimmers. The other panel is looking at artistic impression, which includes choreography, music interpretation and manner of presentation.'
'Synchronized swimming also has rules and ways they should not be broken and below shows what these rules are. Judges can award point deducation for a variety of infringements, including taking too long on the deck before the swimmers enter the pool, making deliberate use of the botton of the pool or missing out any of the complusory elements of the technical routine.
The aims of my documentary would be to try and get the evidence and answers for my five main questions. Whilst getting the answers for these questions I will look at trying to get opinions of the topic and on these main questions from random people and experts but the lead up of this document is to answer the main question. Underneath shows the 5 questions that I am looking to get answered and these are;
The content in my documentary would be things like vox pops, for example I plan to interview random people in stratford and get their opinions of the Olympics just gone and then talk about what they think about dance and should it be in the olympics. I want it to look almost like you see it on Snog, marry, avoid as you see lots of box pops from random people in a busy area.
I would also include interviews with experts, as my document I want it to be set up like Top Gear so in a studio and all the footage seen is like stuff that I as a presenter have gone of sight to film i.e the box pops. So as I want interviews, I would have the interviews in the set up studio like how you'd see it on top gear.
