IOWA’S STATE CHAMPIONSHIP (FOR ILLINOIS DANCERS), PART 1

by Norm Ramil, 8CA music person

Posted 1/4/20

FALL IS PART 1 OF COMP SEASON IN IOWA

OK, Illinois dancers…while we’re starting to look at the January flurry of conference comps and the stress of sectionals, our counterparts in Iowa have an entirely different schedule. They dance under the Iowa State Dance & Drill Team Association (ISDTA), and for them, state is the week after Thanksgiving!

Much like IDTA (and the old TDI) in Illinois and UDA nationallly, the Iowa system offers category competition. Teams can compete in the fall where the prize (besides scores and trophies) is judge feedback, rather than earning a qualification for the state event. Other performance opportunities are the usual Friday night duties plus any local “fall shows” at other local schools. 

AT STATE A WEEK AFTER THANKSGIVING

This all leads to ISDTA’s state competition in early December (or sometimes very late November, depending on Thanksgiving). It’s labeled for the upcoming year, so the event of December 5-6, 2019 was called the “2020 ISDTA Championships.” Teams from across Iowa converge on Des Moines’ Wells Fargo Arena on the first Thursday and Friday after the long Thanksgiving weekend to battle for category championships.

Dance teams can compete in pom, hip hop, novelty, jazz, lyrical, kick, contemporary, production, and prop. Each category gets divided into classes, each with a max of 12 teams, based on school enrollment. A team’s class can change from year to year since the number of classes depends on how many teams are entered that year. Pom, for example, had 153 routines spread out over 14 classes. The second most popular category was Hip Hop with 8 classes. Military drill teams get their own division. The same goes for flag teams, an all-guy division, and a co-ed division.

So for traditional high school dance teams, that adds up to 444 routines over two days. Counting all routines, the judges evaluated 715 dances. And like other organizations that do categories, Iowa dance teams typically bring multiple routines to their state contest.

TEAMS TO CHECK OUT

Scores ranged from 97.38 (earned by Linn-Marr in Class XIV Pom) down to the occasional score in the upper 60s. Teams that came in at the top are easy to find on places like Instagram, so you’ll definitely want to hunt down vids of their performances not just at state but from throughout the whole year. Besides amazing Linn-Marr, there was Clear Lake’s pom routine (96.13), Pleasant Valley’s pom (93.75), Cedar Rapids Prarie’s pom (96.50), Southeast Polk’s hip hop (94.33), Oskaloosa’s lyrical (97.25), Keokuk’s kick (94.33), and Waukee’s contemporary (94.25). If any of those names ring a bell, you might have already come across them on social media or even mingled with them at camp.

One team that really nailed it at state was Clear Lake, who emerged as champs in Pom (class 8), Hip Hop (class 5), and Jazz (class 4). Linn-Marr reigns as a double state champ for 2020 in Pom (class 14) and Jazz (class 7). PCM (Monroe) has two titles, as well (Hip Hop in class 4 and Novelty in class 2). Pleasant Valley are state champs in Pom (class 13) and Jazz (class 6). Southeast Polk showed its versatility by earning state titles in Hip Hop (class 8) and Kick (class 3). West Fork repped it for the smaller schools by winning state championships in both Pom (class 4) and Hip Hop (class 2).

THE FEELS

Also way different from Illinois—especially IHSA—is the general vibe. Each routine on the results sheet lists the scores from each judge, identified by their first names (yay for Midwestern friendliness!). You can literally scan the results and see which dances Gretchen N. liked and which ones struggled in the eyes of Amy Z.

Thursday ends with an awards ceremony for the divisions and categories that competed all day. Friday is a whole ‘nother day with new divisions and categories, and therefore, its own awards ceremony at the end of the night. It’s pretty cool that teams could go into Friday with either a trophy already back in the hotel room or a clean slate to chase a title in a new category!

TRULY A STATE COMP

Just because your HS dancing days are behind you doesn’t leave you out of the state fun in Iowa. ISDTA has been awarding state titles to Iowa college teams since 2007. They’re divided into NCAA divisions (this year they had D-1 Iowa State, Iowa, and Northern Iowa, and several Division 3 schools), NAIA schools (led by St. Ambrose’s outstanding program), and community colleges. College teams danced on Friday for state titles in pom, jazz, and hip hop. 

THE REST OF WINTER

I’m posting this before the end of winter break, so as I type this, 40 different dance teams across Iowa are walking around as 2020 state champs in their category and division. As odd as that is in terms of the calendar, these Iowa dancers aren’t done by any means, and I don’t just mean basketball season. Many teams go on to compete in local comps, or qualifiers for national comps like UDA, NDA, and DTU. ISDTA also runs its All-State show in March to celebrate the close of winter and the long dance season (individual dancers qualify for this in the fall), and they usually perform as an ensemble at the girls basketball state tournament. Throw in the usual showcase and banquet, and you’ve got a busy rest of winter…all of it coming after the state competition!

And the entire cycle starts again in early April with tryouts. 

ILLINOIS DANCERS

DANCERS EVERYWHERE

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