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Empire State Dance Sport Championships 2000- comments and photographs by Robert Abrams
- photographs of Robert Abrams mostly by Lynne Lubash
From August 11 to 13, 2000, 53 professional men and 46 professional women and 73 amateur men and 124 amateur women competed in the Empire State Dance Sport Championships (give or take a Bob and Julia). The competition was very well run. Not only did events run more or less on schedule, but the organizers thought to include big and small touches which ought to be emulated by other comps. These included the use of theatrical lighting so that even newcomer heats looked special. In my personal opinion, lighting is critical for comps to get right. After all, ballroom dancers spend a great deal of time and money to reach for a peak experience at the comps; if the atmosphere is just like a studio or worse, in some ways the dancers and the audience are being cheated. The organizers of the Empire State comp are to be commended for creating an environment which was a little more than just another hotel ballroom. The Empire State comp provided dancers with towels so they could wipe themselves down after perspiring profusely from their dancing. (Women, of course, glow, but the towels work equally well for the removal of such glow.) This is a small detail, but it shows that someone was looking after the small details. I attended most of the comp and took 440 pictures. The best of these pictures are shown on the following pages. I used an Olympus D-460 digital camera (1.3 megapixel). I did not use the flash during competition heats out of respect for the dancers. As a result, quite a few shots show blurriness, either due to the motion of the dancers, or to slight camera motion. Sometimes this blurriness produces an artistic effect. I have tried to identify the people in the photos as best I can. If you can help with identification or corrections, please send an email to me at bob@robertabrams.net. I expect to update these pages with more information, such as names and the type of dance, but I have posted the pictures now so that you can enjoy them as soon as possible.
Thumbnail imagesThis these pages contain the images at thumbnail size (four square inches in area each). We provide these so that they can be downloaded more quickly. Each image is linked to the full size image so that you can easily see the full size images that you wish to see. Pictures in Chronological Order (all of them), Thumbnail size Try the three links below if your connection is too slow to handle downloading 90 pictures at once. They contain exactly the same pictures and text, but it is broken down by day. Pictures in Chronological Order (8/11/00), Thumbnail size Pictures in Chronological Order (8/12/00), Thumbnail size Pictures in Chronological Order (8/13/00), Thumbnail size Full Size ImagesPictures in Chronological Order (all of them), Full Size Try the three links below if your connection is too slow to handle downloading 90 pictures at once. They contain exactly the same pictures and text, but it is broken down by day. If your connection is slow, you may also want to use the half size and compressed images in the next section. They should download five to ten times faster than the full size images. Pictures in Chronological Order (8/11/00), Full Size Pictures in Chronological Order (8/12/00), Full Size Pictures in Chronological Order (8/13/00), Full Size
Half Size, Compressed ImagesPictures in Chronological Order (all of them), Half Size Try the three links below if your connection is too slow to handle downloading 90 pictures at once. They contain exactly the same pictures and text, but it is broken down by day. Pictures in Chronological Order (8/11/00), Half Size Pictures in Chronological Order (8/12/00), Half Size Pictures in Chronological Order (8/13/00), Half Size
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