Split Floor at Competitions

[TangoDancer]

We have routines but i've never had a problem having to change it up on short floors, I just noticed that a lot of people do... they tend to get flustered and forget to look where they're going or something like that. And for higher level smooth, routines are kind of necessary you know..

Though I completely disagree with the necessity of/for routines, I completely agree with the rest of this post. Split floors are not as uncommon as many believe, and a good dancer should be able to recognize the elements of the movements of the routine, and adjust.

[QPO]

I think that is what all dancers strive to be good dancers and to be able to adapt and that is the biggest difference between the two

[IrenaAlexandria]

I've only seen split floor for syllabus-level events. And even then it was painful to watch as the floors were terribly crowded. I could not imagine what it would be like to dance open smooth or standard on a split floor. Yikes! I guess if it happens frequently enough, I would consider an alternate modified routine... but wow, that's just wrong.

[elisedance]

Well, I used to think that too - until we won
That made me think very differently because what the split floor did is to force everyone to show if they could do floorcraft.  And we could.  On an open floor the rote-dancers doing their practised routines win because they can but on the cramped one its actually about dancing

[Rugby]

Totally true ee.  The benefit that we and you have is that we still social dance and have to get used to odd shaped and crowded floors.  The place where we will social dance has an octagonal floor.  

[Lioness]

When our routine doesn't fit the floor, we just keep doing it and turn the corner. We could probably put in some step that effectively turns the corner for us, but as social dancers before comp dancers, we just don't see why we can't turn the corner when it gets there, and never mind about making different routines for certain length floors.

[elisedance]

When our routine doesn't fit the floor, we just keep doing it and turn the corner. We could probably put in some step that effectively turns the corner for us, but as social dancers before comp dancers, we just don't see why we can't turn the corner when it gets there, and never mind about making different routines for certain length floors.

It gets harder as the routine gets more complex - some step sequences are not easy to segue out of, in particular when you have spent a gazillion hours learning it!  But you are still right, you should be able to do so...