ChaCha

[double3s]

I'm curious if anyone knows why ChaCha is (under USFSA) a PreBronze Dance. Preliminary dances are: Dutch Waltz, Canasta Tango, and Rhythm Blues; PreBronze Dances are: Swing Dance, ChaCha, and Fiesta Tango.

ChaCha seems (to me) like it should be PreBronze level because it is all forward skating with no hold changes. I love the ChaCha, of the first six dances, it's probably my favorite - I was just wondering if there's a reason why it's considered more difficult than the Preliminary Dances.

[icedancer2]

I don't know the REAL answer to this, but before the pre-Bronzes were introduced the Preliminaries were the Dutch, the Canasta and the Swing. The Rhythm Blues, the Cha-Cha and the Hickory were introduced in about 1989 as a new Pre-Bronze level. The Fiesta was a Bronze dance along with the Willow and the Ten-Fox.

Sometime in the 90s or maybe in the 00's the dances were switched around - mainly I think because the Swing had backwards skating and was more difficult than the Cha-Cha or the Rhythm Blues so it was put up into Pre-Bronze. The Hickory really is harder than the Cha-Cha and Swing so it was put up into the Bronzes and the Fiesta moved into the Pre-Bronze level.

So I think by default the Cha-Cha has remained a pre-Bronze.

I am sure there are more technical reasons for this and maybe someone could take on the question of "Why is the Cha-Cha more difficult than those other forward dances" but I really don't know what the answer is except for maybe the slightly syncopated rhythm in the Cha-Cha makes it more difficult?

Long live the Cha-Cha. Myself, I like the Canasta!!

Happy dancing everyone!!

[phoenix]

I'd say the steps are a little more complicated; preliminary is very straightforward steps & edges, the most complex you get is the cross-swing in the Canasta.

In the cha-cha you start to break things up more--you don't just do a chasse, you add a wide step to an inside edge as the third step. You have to sycopate the quick step coming out of the slaloms & do another chasse w/ a change on the 3rd step. You have a cross front/slide chasse in the middle of the end pattern.

I have a girl who is working on the preliminary dances & I've just taught her the cha cha. She loves it, but struggles much more than with the preliminaries. Even memorizing the steps took a lot longer, there isn't really any symmetry in this one (as opposed to Dutch Waltz: Swing roll, prog, prog, swing roll, etc).

My 2 cents.

[sk8tmum]

Hmmmm... then, in Canada, here's the basic listing ...

Preliminary - Dutch Waltz, Canasta, Baby Blues
Junior Bronze - Swing, Fiesta Tango, Willow Waltz
Senior Bronze - Ten-fox, Fourteen Step, European, Senior Bronze Creative
Junior Silver - Keats Foxtrot, Harris Tango, American Waltz, Rocker Foxtrot
Senior Silver - Paso Doble, Starlight Waltz, Blues, ChaCha Congelado, Kilian
Gold - Viennese Waltz, Westminster Waltz, Quickstep, Argentine Tango, Silver Samba
Diamond - Rhumba, Tango Romantica,Yankee, Ravensburger


And, IMHO, the European is mis-classified along with the other Senior Bronze ... it's considerably more difficult than the Ten-Fox et al.

[aussieskater]

And here is Australia's listing (for anyone who's interested in the comparison). Note we have no "adult" stream as such - everyone tests the standard track (and the judges give no quarter because you're an adult):

Elementary 1: Dutch & Canasta

Elementary 2: Swing & Fiesta

Primary (pre-novice); 14-step, European, foxtrot, silver samba (8O )

Novice: Rocker foxtrot, starlight, cha cha congelado, tango

Junior: Westminster, quickstep, kilian, blues

Senior: Viennese, paso, rhumba, argentine tango.

Sk8mum - While I've only started work on our primary dances a little while ago and can't yet do them, my initial impression is that I'm going to prefer the foxtrot and european to the other two, by a long way!

[double3s]

Thanks, icedancer2, that's interesting history - I wondered if the answer might be something along the lines of "that's just the way it worked out."

Phoenix, I hear you on the steps being a bit more complicated - I can see that, intellectually at least. It's just that for some reason, I find ChaCha to be quite easy, maybe because I enjoy it so much.

Thanks for the Canadian and Aussie versions, sk8tmum and aussieskater. That's a big jump you Aussies have to make from Elementary 2 into Primary! It totally skips over our Bronze level - Hickory Hoedown, Willow Waltz, Ten Fox - what I think of as the first hard dances at the easy level, if that makes any sense.

Here's the rest of USFSA test structure, for comparison. I only know up through PreSilver right now so can't comment any higher than that (at least from first hand experience, I certainly have my favorites from watching others do them - can't WAIT to learn Rhumba, if I ever get to International dances).


Preliminary dances
Dutch Waltz
Canasta Tango
Rhythm Blues

Pre Bronze dances
Swing Dance
ChaCha -
Fiesta Tango

Bronze dances
Hickory Hoedown
Willow Waltz
Ten Fox

Pre Silver dances
Fourteen Step
European Waltz
Foxtrot

Silver dances
American Waltz
Tango
Rocker Foxtrot

Pre Gold dances
Killian
Blues
Paso Doble
Starlight Waltz

Gold dances
Viennese Waltz
Westminster Waltz
Quickstep
Argentine Tango

[Virtualsk8r]

Good list, Sk8tmum but you forgot a couple of dances:

Preliminary: Prelminary creative dance
Senior Silver: Silver interpretive dance
Gold: Gold interpretive dance
Diamond: Austrian Waltz & Golden Waltz

In Canada, in order to get full credit for a level you need to pass:

3 Preliminary
3 Jr Bronze
3 Senior Bronze
4 Jr Silver
4 Sr Silver
4 Gold
4 Diamond

However, most skaters do the 5 Gold dances. The creative dances are not as popular in some areas as others but since they can be done solo and with steps the skater is comfortable with- often coaches choose them. I've had skaters do the Senior Bronze creative dance instead of the European because they couldn't control those three turns and were blocked at testing higher. Once they hit their Gold dances, it was no problem!

BTW When I tested there was no Baby Blues - we did the swing dance as a preliminary dance, and the Ten-Fox was a Jr Bronze, with the Foxtrot as a Senior Bronze! The Rhumba was a gold dance - and the Starlight was a new dance, because the Silver Samba and Three-Lobe waltz had been removed . My favorite dance do do was the Yankee Polka - with the Silver Samba coming in second!!

[Mrs Redboots]

ChaCha seems (to me) like it should be PreBronze level because it is all forward skating with no hold changes. I love the ChaCha, of the first six dances, it's probably my favorite - I was just wondering if there's a reason why it's considered more difficult than the Preliminary Dances.

In the cha-cha you start to break things up more--you don't just do a chasse, you add a wide step to an inside edge as the third step. You have to sycopate the quick step coming out of the slaloms & do another chasse w/ a change on the 3rd step. You have a cross front/slide chasse in the middle of the end pattern.

We don't have the Canadian Cha-cha (as we call it, to distinguish it from the Festival cha-cha, a recreational dance to the fast cha-cha music) as part of our test structure, but I have learnt it to competitive standard for the Mountain Cup and we'll have to brush it up again for this year. What we have found is that you need to push much harder in it to cover the ice properly; in the Dutch Waltz and Rhythm Blues, say, you can let the big steps flow and cover the ice that way, but you can't do that for the Canadian. For us, the wide-step holds no terrors, as we have first met it at Level 3 in the Golden Skaters' Waltz and in the Riverside Rhumba, both of which have one. The outside chassé is a bit disconcerting at first, though, and the "double whammy" kneebend - which I was taught to do in the Foxtrot, but nobody seems to do any more.

It's not part of our structure at all, as I said. I get a bit confused with what's where (NISA keeps changing it), but I think at the moment it's:

Level 1 Bronze: Novice Foxtrot and Rhythm Blues
Level 2 Bronze: Dutch Waltz and Canasta Tango
Level 3 Bronze: Golden Skaters' Waltz and Riverside Rhumba
Level 4 Silver: Fiesta Tango and Swing Dance
Level 5 Silver: Willow Waltz and 14-step
Level 6 Silver: European Waltz and Foxtrot (I think - someone correct me if I'm wrong here!).

I get lost with what comes where in levels 7-10 Gold.... often if people get that far they move into the competitive stream anyway, which is a bit different.

[Ellyn]

I don't know the REAL answer to this, but before the pre-Bronzes were introduced the Preliminaries were the Dutch, the Canasta and the Swing. The Rhythm Blues, the Cha-Cha and the Hickory were introduced in about 1989 as a new Pre-Bronze level. The Fiesta was a Bronze dance along with the Willow and the Ten-Fox.

Sometime in the 90s or maybe in the 00's the dances were switched around

If so, it was the early 90s. I started ice dancing in 1993, and the test structure then was the same as it is now. (Well, aside from some changes in the international dances including moving Starlight Waltz to pre-gold. But at the lower levels, it hasn't changed in the past 15 years.)

As far as I know, the only switch that happened a few years before I started was the addition of the three new low-test dances that you mentioned above and resorting the resulting 9 preliminary through bronze dances into three levels including the addition of prebronze instead of the original 6 in just preliminary and bronze.

[jenlyon60]

I think the addition of the Pre-Bronze was somewhere around the 1989/1990 timeframe. I seem to vaguely remember having a rulebook from that era that was the first year the Hickory Hoedown was included in the test structure.

[momsk8er]

I don't know when the change happened, but I know I passed the Dutch, the Canasta and the Swing as Preliminary and the Fiesta, Willow and the Ten-Fox as Bronze dances. But - that was back in the 60s! LOL - been a loooong time.

[jenlyon60]

It was after 1988. I finished my Bronzes in 86 or maybe winter of 86/87. Tested my 14-Step and Foxtrot in 1987, and tested European Waltz for the first time in 1988, right before I moved overseas.

Back when you had to be 30 or 35 to test dance as an Adult track, and you had to do 3 patterns of EW for the pair and 2 patterns solo.