Evaluation and estimation in dance are really complex conscious and not conscious processes following these characteristics:
- Evaluation of dancer’s abilities (what it’s the potential)
- Evaluation of dancer’s motor and technical skills (what someone have done to show those potentials)
- Evaluation of personal expression (how he/she acts)
- Evaluation of artistic expression (he/she manage the meaning of art, beauty and so on)
- Evaluation of compatibility of dancers, cohesion between both dancers (they perform together very well)
- Evaluation of dancer’s current performance – skills and preparation (How he/she performs now),
- Evaluation of one’s performance versus other’s performances
- Other unpredictable factors
An estimation is based on a simple psychological rule, the human being is able to give an objective and exact evaluation of a certain subject.
A lot of different opinions were given about the problems of objectivity and subjectivity of measurement and evaluation. We are all very sure that objectivity of judging is quite hard to reach. The more the subject is general and not well defined, the harder is the objective evaluation. In such cases the estimation is quite subjective. A process of judging is always under the estimators attitudes’ influence.
Avoiding errors can be reached by some important steps:
- training of estimators
- strong definition of estimation subject
- not knowing dancers (which is almost impossible) or at least avoiding settlement of estimators (for competition) who have possible strong relationship to any dancer
- erasing upper and bottom estimations
- standardising instructions before estimating and giving warnings according to object of estimation before any estimation
- controlling estimators estimations (by correlation and analysing: comparing my to other’s estimations) and warning estimators about their mistakes
- education of estimators
- estimation on the base of objective scale and not just on the base of “one-to another” subjective impression
The judges’ function, in addition to being sensitive to the undeniable psychological aspects involved, it’s even more difficult than that of athletes and coaches. Not enough to know perfectly the discipline, technical aspects and rules, you must know how to apply and recognize everything promptly and accurately.
The difficulties of the judgment provision are undoubted and also stem from the
psychological tension, the complexity of the race and the position of the Competition Judge: the place where the event occurs, or to assess the length of time of the valuation (also exceed 10 consecutive hours). All this can be addressed and managed through adequate training route which also includes mental training.
(by Daniela Sepio)
