I want lust, and love, and a smattering of romance
Early March, you say? Doesn't that mean it's about time I wrote about the annual rapper dancing competition, DERT? Why yes, it is.
Those of you who have been following my exploits in detail this year may remember that I've been suffering from a humorous variety of foot and leg injuries. Not, you might think, ideal when preparing for a dance competition.
Add to that Bea's knee injury, Ang having been ill for 6 weeks, rapperaddict's knee-based issues and the fact we've only had one practice where all competing dancers were present and you might think that Mabel Gubbins' rehearsing hadn't been going desperately well.
You'd be right :)
However! We were booked, and it's a pretty fun social occasion anyway, so we bravely headed north to Burton-on-Trent on Friday night. Distance-learning Mabels Bea (Norwich) and Lynn (Brighton) delivered themselves, the rest of us packed into Angi's car and all jollied up the motorway together. Eating delicious chicken, ham hock, leek and mushroom pies baked by Katie - she'd made them mince pie size for easy, non-crumby eating in the car (and she'd provided paper plates and multicoloured napkins and munchalong carrot batons...). We decanted ourselves into the Travelodge, and broke out the gin.
(DERT usually provides "indoor camping" accommodation - a bit of floor to put your sleeping bag on. I usually do that, the others usually don't. However the brand new Travelodge in Burton (in a converted railway warehouse) was doing such improbable discounts that sharing three to a room was actually cheaper than doing the indoor camping. As budget hotels go, it's pretty nice and I recommend it.)
We headed up to the indoor camping venue anyway to catch up with people, and basically spent the next 5 hours or so hollering at each other to be heard over the hubbub of hundreds of people who haven't seen each other in a year. It's a remarkable feeling dropping into such a huge crowd where you know virtually everyone (by sight if not by name).
The makeshift bar had suffered from crippling under-estimation and run out of proper beer, so I experimented grumpily with canned creamflow Boddingtons (really vile) and ditto John Smiths (marginally less horrid). And I collected a DVD from one team to pass to someone else in mine, and I checked that a third team had notified my Dad they're going to his festival, and I congratulated someone from a fourth team on her marriage, and chatted to someone from a fifth about our upcoming joint trip to Germany, and filched some decent beer from someone from a sixth... you get the idea. I also dished out my beer cakes, which went down well.
The actual competition is on the Saturday and takes the form of a pub crawl. We meandered round Burton in accordance with our printed instructions, presenting ourselves in various pubs at the correct times to do a dance. Pubs at 11 in the morning are frequently empty, so we also filled in as enthusiastic crowds for any other teams we met along the way. We were extraordinarily grumpy a number of years back when we got very low marks for "buzz factor" when we danced in a pub which contained us, the judges, and exactly no audience... it's difficult to generate much enthusiasm among an absent audience. So we clapped and cheered and hooted (even for our competition ;)
DERT this year was in three classes. Open, for newish sides, Premier for the really good sides, and Championship for everyone who falls between those two. There are vague guidelines relating to promotion, but none to relegation - mostly the classes are fairly self-selecting. A team which was brilliant last year might have lost three members and be full of new people by this year... as a rule teams are trusted to put themselves in the appropriate class.
We're definite second-rank Championship material, by the way. In a world of extremes, we fall firmly in the middle of everything. We are not a team of geriatrics, but neither are we one of the teams of twenty-somethings which are storming all over the rapper world at present. We're decent, but rarely outstanding (and rarely shite).
Anyway, with our final dance done - they all went fine, but none felt outstanding - we watched the traditional competition, and took ourselves off to the excellent Balti Tower for tea. Balti Tower is unlicensed, but is next door to a splendid pub with whom they have a friendly arrangement. They also do stormingly good curry and family-sized naans - having ordered one, I just wanted to snuggle up under its fluffy loveliness and then eat my way out. But didn't, because I was sharing it with four other people and I felt it'd be rude.
Full of curry and beer, we trooped back to the Town Hall for the showcase - that is to say, to watch yet more rapper dancing. One dance from every competing team, on the stage. Outstanding memories of the evening include seeing Star and Shadow (later to be revealed as winners of the Premier) holding up a 13-sword sword lock (which you may be able to see here - or maybe not, I really don't understand Facebook) and accidentally watching a strawpedo contest organised in the bar by the Newcastle Kingsmen, which was won in a positively ludicrously short amount of time by the Tommy from the Danish rapper team Red Mum.
Then silence in the big hall for the announcement of the results. I didn't agree with the results for the traditional competition (I thought the team who came second were terrible, but these things are always a bit subjective). Then the announcement of the Open winners left us slightly baffled... really? Did they win? That's... surprising.
Then our class results. Third, Maltby Phoenix. Second, Mons Meg. Damn, we thought. We'd hoped we might get a second or third. Who else is left? Who's going to have won?
Which explains why, when they announced that we'd won, instead of cheering we all looked vaguely baffled and confused. (Longtime readers may remember that I wrote something broadly similar a few years back when we'd had a complete lack of practice, a few injuries, a few mishaps, and came second. Clearly we need to revise our practising strategy...)
(Photo taken by the lovely Trina)
And so prizes were distributed, and people screamed a lot and took photos. And we all turfed out to The Old Cottage, the nearest pub with a late licence. Which also turned out to be a pub which is kind of quiet on a Saturday night, and was staffed by exactly one person. I have to say, said person was the most staggeringly efficient bar person I have ever seen - she seemed to be taking orders from 3 or 4 people at a time, churning out drinks and taking money - but she wasn't up to serving hundreds. Within ten minutes, two dancers and one musician who are experienced barworkers had been uncovered and installed behind the bar and the four of them churned out drinks at phenomenal speed while anyone who felt inclined collected glasses and operated the dishwasher. I'm slightly surprised that someone would let three total strangers behind the bar to operate the till - while serving their mates - but the pub must have been raking it in. (Apparently the obligatory sweep round the pubs the following morning looking for lost swords found the Old Cottage full of locals and the staff worried that they were in danger of running out of almost everything :)
With the following morning also came the news that the Open results had indeed been botched, and the winners were someone completely different. Indeed, the team who'd initially been awarded the prize had raised it themselves as being probably a mistake - though I still feel sorry for them. Interestingly, this means that this year all three classes were won by women's teams, as were the prizes for music and best newcomer, and the Steve Marris trophy for best overall performance.
Leodensians! People of Leeds! The dance extravaganza, beer bonanza and all-round travelling circus that is DERT rolls into your city next year. See you there ;)
Those of you who have been following my exploits in detail this year may remember that I've been suffering from a humorous variety of foot and leg injuries. Not, you might think, ideal when preparing for a dance competition.
Add to that Bea's knee injury, Ang having been ill for 6 weeks, rapperaddict's knee-based issues and the fact we've only had one practice where all competing dancers were present and you might think that Mabel Gubbins' rehearsing hadn't been going desperately well.
You'd be right :)
However! We were booked, and it's a pretty fun social occasion anyway, so we bravely headed north to Burton-on-Trent on Friday night. Distance-learning Mabels Bea (Norwich) and Lynn (Brighton) delivered themselves, the rest of us packed into Angi's car and all jollied up the motorway together. Eating delicious chicken, ham hock, leek and mushroom pies baked by Katie - she'd made them mince pie size for easy, non-crumby eating in the car (and she'd provided paper plates and multicoloured napkins and munchalong carrot batons...). We decanted ourselves into the Travelodge, and broke out the gin.
(DERT usually provides "indoor camping" accommodation - a bit of floor to put your sleeping bag on. I usually do that, the others usually don't. However the brand new Travelodge in Burton (in a converted railway warehouse) was doing such improbable discounts that sharing three to a room was actually cheaper than doing the indoor camping. As budget hotels go, it's pretty nice and I recommend it.)
We headed up to the indoor camping venue anyway to catch up with people, and basically spent the next 5 hours or so hollering at each other to be heard over the hubbub of hundreds of people who haven't seen each other in a year. It's a remarkable feeling dropping into such a huge crowd where you know virtually everyone (by sight if not by name).
The makeshift bar had suffered from crippling under-estimation and run out of proper beer, so I experimented grumpily with canned creamflow Boddingtons (really vile) and ditto John Smiths (marginally less horrid). And I collected a DVD from one team to pass to someone else in mine, and I checked that a third team had notified my Dad they're going to his festival, and I congratulated someone from a fourth team on her marriage, and chatted to someone from a fifth about our upcoming joint trip to Germany, and filched some decent beer from someone from a sixth... you get the idea. I also dished out my beer cakes, which went down well.
The actual competition is on the Saturday and takes the form of a pub crawl. We meandered round Burton in accordance with our printed instructions, presenting ourselves in various pubs at the correct times to do a dance. Pubs at 11 in the morning are frequently empty, so we also filled in as enthusiastic crowds for any other teams we met along the way. We were extraordinarily grumpy a number of years back when we got very low marks for "buzz factor" when we danced in a pub which contained us, the judges, and exactly no audience... it's difficult to generate much enthusiasm among an absent audience. So we clapped and cheered and hooted (even for our competition ;)
DERT this year was in three classes. Open, for newish sides, Premier for the really good sides, and Championship for everyone who falls between those two. There are vague guidelines relating to promotion, but none to relegation - mostly the classes are fairly self-selecting. A team which was brilliant last year might have lost three members and be full of new people by this year... as a rule teams are trusted to put themselves in the appropriate class.
We're definite second-rank Championship material, by the way. In a world of extremes, we fall firmly in the middle of everything. We are not a team of geriatrics, but neither are we one of the teams of twenty-somethings which are storming all over the rapper world at present. We're decent, but rarely outstanding (and rarely shite).
Anyway, with our final dance done - they all went fine, but none felt outstanding - we watched the traditional competition, and took ourselves off to the excellent Balti Tower for tea. Balti Tower is unlicensed, but is next door to a splendid pub with whom they have a friendly arrangement. They also do stormingly good curry and family-sized naans - having ordered one, I just wanted to snuggle up under its fluffy loveliness and then eat my way out. But didn't, because I was sharing it with four other people and I felt it'd be rude.
Full of curry and beer, we trooped back to the Town Hall for the showcase - that is to say, to watch yet more rapper dancing. One dance from every competing team, on the stage. Outstanding memories of the evening include seeing Star and Shadow (later to be revealed as winners of the Premier) holding up a 13-sword sword lock (which you may be able to see here - or maybe not, I really don't understand Facebook) and accidentally watching a strawpedo contest organised in the bar by the Newcastle Kingsmen, which was won in a positively ludicrously short amount of time by the Tommy from the Danish rapper team Red Mum.
Then silence in the big hall for the announcement of the results. I didn't agree with the results for the traditional competition (I thought the team who came second were terrible, but these things are always a bit subjective). Then the announcement of the Open winners left us slightly baffled... really? Did they win? That's... surprising.
Then our class results. Third, Maltby Phoenix. Second, Mons Meg. Damn, we thought. We'd hoped we might get a second or third. Who else is left? Who's going to have won?
Which explains why, when they announced that we'd won, instead of cheering we all looked vaguely baffled and confused. (Longtime readers may remember that I wrote something broadly similar a few years back when we'd had a complete lack of practice, a few injuries, a few mishaps, and came second. Clearly we need to revise our practising strategy...)
(Photo taken by the lovely Trina)
And so prizes were distributed, and people screamed a lot and took photos. And we all turfed out to The Old Cottage, the nearest pub with a late licence. Which also turned out to be a pub which is kind of quiet on a Saturday night, and was staffed by exactly one person. I have to say, said person was the most staggeringly efficient bar person I have ever seen - she seemed to be taking orders from 3 or 4 people at a time, churning out drinks and taking money - but she wasn't up to serving hundreds. Within ten minutes, two dancers and one musician who are experienced barworkers had been uncovered and installed behind the bar and the four of them churned out drinks at phenomenal speed while anyone who felt inclined collected glasses and operated the dishwasher. I'm slightly surprised that someone would let three total strangers behind the bar to operate the till - while serving their mates - but the pub must have been raking it in. (Apparently the obligatory sweep round the pubs the following morning looking for lost swords found the Old Cottage full of locals and the staff worried that they were in danger of running out of almost everything :)
With the following morning also came the news that the Open results had indeed been botched, and the winners were someone completely different. Indeed, the team who'd initially been awarded the prize had raised it themselves as being probably a mistake - though I still feel sorry for them. Interestingly, this means that this year all three classes were won by women's teams, as were the prizes for music and best newcomer, and the Steve Marris trophy for best overall performance.
Leodensians! People of Leeds! The dance extravaganza, beer bonanza and all-round travelling circus that is DERT rolls into your city next year. See you there ;)