First in Category. Special Awards!

There you are sitting in the dark auditorium after a very long day at a dance competition and the award ceremony is underway. The MC is flying through the adjudication awards and then he throws out a "First in Category" and keeps plowing along. Wait, what just happened? There is no time to ask questions or you'll miss your dancer's adjudication placement.

What is a First in Category Award? It's a special little nugget that they hand out at some competitions. The dance genres (dance styles) are all lumped together, such as tap, hip hop, contemporary, musical theatre, ballet, acro, open or lyrical within a category. However, when there is a first in category given, the genre is broken out for this special award. Usually there needs to be a minimum number of routines that have the specific genre in a category for dancers to get this award (it's often 3 but of course varies by competition.)

Here is an example for a solo: There are 65 solos in the teen intermediate category. 25 solos are contemporary, 10 solos are lyrical, 5 solos are tap, 5 solos are musical theatre, 10 solos are hip hop, and 10 solos are open. For this example there would be 6 first in category awards handed out. The soloist that received the highest score for their genre would win this award.

Here is the confusing part, if your dancer wins this award it does not mean she will automatically place in the overalls. From the above example, your dancer won first in category for tap (whoot whoot, so awesome). She won this because her score was the highest for tap and she beat out the other four tappers. However, any of the other soloist in the category of 65 (minus the 4 tappers that you know your dancer beat), could still have a higher score in the entire category, thus beating your dancer out in the overalls.

Having dance variety is what makes the competitions so fun and packed with entertainment!

Receiving a First in Category Award is really cool and hopefully gives your dancer a boost knowing that she was the best "tapper" on the stage that day in her category. Super awesome!