Our studio has never attended Starbound talent before and are interested in any feed back you could give us. Good experience? Bad experience? Judging ( How they score and if it was fair). Talk to me.

I havent been to Starbound in a LONG time. I used to compete there was I was a young dancer so about 10 years ago...

I was NEVER happy with the competition. They used to hold it in high schools (dont know about now), but that is extremely uncomfortable. You changed in either boiling hot gyms or dirty hallways. You started dancing at 7 or 8 in the morning and because they would run HOURS late, you would still be dancing at 1130 at night!!! (Usually on a Sunday night, when we had school the next morning!) My studio kept going back every year because it was local and easy (they were lazy and didnt care) but none of the parents were realy happy about the competition.

I hated their judging (as Ive said in previous competition posts, I dont like adjudicated judging - for me as a dancer, recieving a platinum made my class lazy and they didnt think they needed to really improve anything - myself included). Their score sheets and criticism was minimal - basically talking about costumes and music and not so much how to improve our technique or stage presence. Though, the high scores were ALWAYS the numbers that were made up of very little technical ability and ALL stage presence (While I feel they are both equally important - they focused more on stage presence).

Sorry to be so negative, but the studio I work for now will NOT attend it for the same reasons and I had NOTHING to do with that decision! =)

I just think that there are many other competitions more deserving of your/your students talent, time and money!


Hope that helped!

We attended Starbound and we were not happy at all. It ran super late, they didn't have awards every few hours like most of the other competitions, they would go 10 hours before having awards. They held the competition in the biggest dump of a high school, probably because it's cheapest, and their critique tapes were not impressive. Sorry to be a downer but we wouldn't attend this competition again.
Do a search on Starbound on here, I dont think its a very popular choice.

I HATE STARBOUND! It is the only one that I will never take my students to again, and I have been to a lot. We are in our 14th year of competing, and I had never seen such rude, unprofessional, cheap competition in all those years. I cannot even get into it, so much stuff happened....

Just sit back and wait for all of the other people to comment. Starbound is the most hated competition on this board!

I also forgot to mention that the only studios that did well at this competition were the ones that brought the most dances.

I suppose this could happen to anyone but we attended there many years ago and they miscalculated the scoring of the routine by over 30 points-took the dance from a Silver to an honorable mention. It was very embarassing for the students to be the only routine in the entire comeptition to score an honorable mention, and it wasn't even legit. When we realized the error and contacted them-they wouldn't even acknowledge it and said mistakes happen and pretty much better luck next time. This was enough to never come back.

My studio did not like Starbound at all. We had gone there years ago and loved it, but it's not the same anymore. They don't even give critique tapes, just papers that are hardly even written on. They hardly critique anything. Also, they are so screwed up with the scheduling. They first said that they were running early so to come earlier. Then when we got there, they were WAY behind. Our studio didn't have anything for the rest of the day, so we decided that we'd come back for awards that night that they told us would be around 7, when they were originally scheduled for 10, so we get there and there is NO one left in the building! All of the custodians are there cleaning up! We couldn't believe it. They mailed the awards, but still, it just wasn't a great experience at all.

If you go to Starbound, there's a very good chance that you will leave wondering of the judges were watching the same stage that you were watching.

hmmm alrighty then! thanks everyone....that was enough info for me! I think Im sticking with our "usuals"!!!

If it's not your only option, and even then I'd think twice, I'd skip it. It was one of the worst experiences my teams have ever had.

Isnt Starbound the one that someone posted about a few months back, saying that they only gave out golds the ENTIRE competition? Not only that, but they only had gold awards on the table anyway, so they had never planned on giving anyone anything else. That is simply pathetic. It's competitions like this that give adjudication competitions a bad name, eventhough they can be a lot of fun.

Thumbs down from me, too, on Starbound.

Didn't like them either. Everyone in the comp received gold, whether they deserved it or not. Just looking for the $$$$.