Excpectation, interpretation and dance team

Yesterday I went to the Section 4AA Dance competition at Sauk Rapids High School. I was on my high schools dance team and they were competing to go to the State Tournament two weeks from now, so I went to cheer them on. After all the teams had danced both High Kick and Jazz/funk there is about a half an hour break while the judges tally the scores. During this break a lot of the parents asked me how I thought the scores were going to end up and who would place high enough to go to State (in our section the top 4 teams go in kick, top 3 in jazz. It’s different for every section, based on the number of teams in the section, and results in 12 teams competing in at State.). While I did give the parents that asked my prediction (1-Cathedral 2-Sartell 3-Apollo and 4-Roccori for kick, same for jazz minus Roccori [only the top 3 go in jazz, remember] in case you were curious) I also warned them that I was extremely biased in favor of Apollo because I danced for them. They were my team. In the end the scores ended up being 1-Cathedral 2-Sartell 3-Roccori and 4-Apollo for kick and 1-Sartell 2-Cathedral and 3-Sauk Rapids in Jazz.

As often happens when judging doesn’t go my way I was moderately frustrated that the judges didn’t see eye to eye with me. Couldn’t they see that though a girl fell in Cathedral’s jazz dance that it was still far stronger than Sartell’s and they still deserved first? Didn’t they understand that though Apollo and Roccori were almost neck in neck for kick skill and execution wise that Apollo’s dance was more difficult and more original? And why, in the name of all that is good in this world, couldn’t they see that Apollo’s Jazz was simply better than Sauk Rapids’?
And then I started thinking more deeply about it. Perhaps my bias was so strong in favor of Apollo that I couldn’t judge clearly. Maybe I expected Cathedral (last years State Champions) to be the best team simply because they always were. And what if I expected Apollo to beat Sauk rapids because they had been all year, not because they danced better this time? When I thought about the dances I could kind of see the bias and the influence of expectation. When I was watching Apollo or Cathedral dance I would almost turn a blind eye to any flaws. They were miniscule, not worth a second thought I told myself. They didn’t take enough away from my internal scoring probably because I didn’t want or expect them to. When I watched other teams compete, particularly one’s we had had big rivalries with when I was on the team or teams that provided a bigger threat to my teams chance to go to State I was a much harsher judge. If they had the same or similar flaws to the ones I had deemed unimportant for Apollo or Cathedral I now deemed them inexcusable and hoped and prayed the judges would think the same. My personal bias, expectation and fierce desire to see my team win made me an incredibly unfair judge.

As I was thinking this it reminded me of Stanly Fish’s essay. Fish made the argument that expectation and personal/societal bias play a large role in how we view a work. Fish’s example was the list of names that his poetry student’s read and interpreted as a religious poem because that’s what they expected it to be. Likewise I expected Cathedral to take first in both because they always had. I put Apollo ahead of Sauk Rapids because that had been the way the scores had gone all year, never mind the fact that this was a new day, a new competition, new judges and a new chance to shine or to fail, to have the best performance of the year or to fall or screw up somewhere you never had before. My expectations and hopes influenced how I watched each dance and how I believed the scores would add up.

In this regard I would have to agree with Fish. I think it is important to understand our own expectations, biases and hopes—our soul if you will; the part of us that makes us who we are—in order to truly read o work of writing, look at a painting, judge a film or even watch a dance competition. Though I think there are other aspects that go into how we view the world and works of art and do not think that we should overestimate the effects of expectation and bias, I also feel with absolute certainty that we can never underestimate them either. Again, it is all about balance.