Hello all,

Spotlight, Showcase, thanks and crawl!

Thank you for last night, think we all made some progress although there seemed to be an array of bruises and mild accidents (hope no-one is too worse for wear today).

Spotlight - we discussed this and, as we haven't got to the point of having an alternative set available for Piccadilly we were better to have the main set dance and compete to do well. The logic was that, although we could enter Jubilee/Westerhope, that wasn't really the point and we were better to aim to win than dance something that wasn't Piccadilly.

Showcase - this had a much longer discussion and, as was pretty obvious, left my brain totally squelched at the options. I think to best show the team we have two options 1. Piccadilly or 2. Double Jubilee. As discussed there are pros and cons to both, last year we had quite a lot of other teams say they were disappointed not to see our competition dance and we do know that this shows us at our most impressive so from a PR point of view option 1 makes the most sense. The great thing about double jubilee is it gives everyone a chance to be involved (although there would have to be extra tommys!) but I'm worried about the amount of extra work and the majority of people didn't actually seem that bothered about dancing if it was easier to focus on the competiton dances at practices. Although I loved having everyone together I think this year we'll be better to just do Piccadilly, repeating what we did last year won't have the same impact and will simply mean less practice time.

I hope this is ok, I'm aware it makes DERT very main set heavy and that really wasn't the intention! 

I want to take this opportunity to thank everyone for their hard work and commitment in the last few months. We've had great attendance to both practices and crawls which has meant we've been able to keep pushing forward with both of the dances so they're both looking great. I think what I didn't consider at the start of it all is how much new stuff was happening: we've had new people learning Westerhope, even newer people learning Jubilee, new music, new tommy. Add it all together and that requires a lot more time and work! The good thing is that, despite being in DERT prep mode, it won't take long after to get people dancing their new dances out as we've put work in the last few months.

FYI the coming crawl this Thursday will start as Westerhope only as Hannorah has to leave by 9. Once she has gone we will convert to Piccadilly only. Westerhope set please be at the pub between 7-7.15 to sort out neckers and ready to dance by 7.30 so we can get you in as many pubs as possible before Hannorah goes. Piccadilly set please attend the whole thing, it's always hard to get hard of people to find them mid crawl so easier if we're all there from the start and means we can film/cheer/collect!

Thanks all,

Becky