Last week the Dance Adjudication Network attended the Amazon Web Services Headquarters in London for a Symposium organised by Merrick-Ed in partnership with RM Compare to present a talk titled: ‘Comparative Judgement at an Olympic Level’.
We began by explaining to the audience of UK school leaders and educators what Breaking is and how it’s a dance, a sport, and a creative expression all at the same time. We explained the challenge of maintaining the essence of Breaking on the Olympic stage and how failure to do this could mean rejection of the Olympic version by the Breaking community.
We explained that the innovative approach to determining a winner is comparative judgement, which sees competitors, going head to head with no scores, as judges determine winner of each round after watching dancers in turn and the dancer with the majority of judge's decisions wins.
We explained the evolution of the role of a judge, from picking favourites to using a digital interface and framework with a shared language alongside other judges for fairer results.
We watched a Breaking battle and the audience voted for who they thought was the winner, getting a hands-on example of direct comparison and utilising a holistic assessment.
We explained that the Trivium Judging System is composed of the Framework and the interface. The framework provides the descriptive
element and the interface allows these to be recorded as gradual decisions. Kevin explained the need for a shared language - to give clarity on what is valued. We then invited the audience to use this framework to assess the battle that they’d just watched and give their take on each set of qualities and gave them the chance to compare their decisions against the judging panel and introduced them to the results.
Next up was an explanation of why scores don’t work in Breaking. We explained the process used to reach the set of values in the shared language of the system.
We explained the roots of Trivium in classical education as far back as Plato and Aristotle and how Niels adapted it for assessing performance and then for judging.
We explained that Breaking managed to stay true to its essence because the judging system allowed dancers the same creative freedom that is integral to the artform.
The presentation was well-received by the audience and there were lots of follow-up discussions on the importance of providing assessment methods that encourage creativity without the imposition of standards.
Later on in the day Storm joined a panel to discuss the potential for comparative judgement in education. He provided a unique perspective and drawing parallels with the cypher as a form of dialogue in Breaking, emphasised the need to develop anti-fragile but flexible learners.