Hello all, Thank you for everyone's attendance and contributions yesterday, I think we got through lots of stuff! Those who weren't there please look to Hannah's minutes which should appear in the next week once she's had a chance to make sense of them! I just wanted to have my attitude to choosing people for DERT made really clear so everyone is on the same page - if you have any thoughts or questions please do just get in touch! The main DERT set is always chosen to best represent the team - ideally we have the best steppers and dancers who can show off our style and what we can achieve when we really put our minds to it! At the same time it relies a lot on each individual being able to contribute the necessary time and energy in advance, so as to best prepare. That means coming to the vast majority, if not every, practice from January to March, all of the crawls and all of the day practices (we have at least 2 plus a Westerhope one). Options for crawls and day practices will come soon. I know it's a long time in advance but it does help me in my decision making. Other than the main set we are more flexible. As mentioned we will, if possible, have a different Spotlight set/some different doing Piccadilly. This would still only contain people that were confident enough to perform it well and who I thought could represent us properly, but it doesn't need the same intense time commitment in advance. Trad would ideally be performed by an entirely different set to the main set to allow practices to go ahead - I know Hannah being in both was tricky for both the Westerhope side trying to practice and for Hannah herself! Westerhope isn't as technically hard as Piccadilly, but it still needs alot of work to make it look good, if we were continuing it exactly the same as before practice time could also be spent on Jubilee and Piccadilly by the same people, if the trad leader thought Westerhope was good enough to do so. Showcase - few ideas of what we could do but an emphasis on everone being on stage. Which I think is a great idea, it looked fab when we did it this time, although again it did take having everyone there on multiple practices to make it work. More generally I know there are various people who want to learn new positions. I'm keen for this to happen as well, partly so everyone continues to enjoy dancing! At the same time I think we can all say that Jubilee is not up to scratch at the moment so before progressing people I'd like to take some time to get it neat again. It's meant to be as tight, energetic and precise as Piccadilly which it just isn't at the moment, so I will try and tackle that. I think as was said yesterday older members have got complacent as to how to perform it because we've done it for so long, and newer people probably haven't been given some of the finer details yet because we've been focussing on getting it out. This is a video of Jubilee from DERT 2014 where we came 3rd in the Championship. It's not perfect but I think it gives a reasonable impression of the energy and snappiness we want. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wDlCXZaYGzI [https://www.bing.com/th?id=OVP.dJOoamgbdASduoovrm0x8wEsDh&pid=Api]<h… Tower Ravens Rapper - DERT 2014<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wDlCXZaYGzI> DERT 2014 Tower Ravens Rapper www.youtube.com I hope that all seems reasonable. If there are any questions or points which you disagree with me just give me an email/come and chat at practice. 2017 I think everyone would agree there was a wonderful team feeling at DERT, not everyone was dancing, but the support spectators gave was amazing, as a dancer it was so uplifting to look out and see everyone smiling and cheering! Becky xx