Legends 2023: Reflecting on Successes, Challenges, and Future Planning

It’s been roughly three months since the conclusion of Legends 2023, and our team is already beginning preparations for what we hope to be an even better Legends 2024. Before we get started, we wanted to take a moment and reflect on the past year and share some insight into what planning for Legends looks like. 

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LEGENDS BACKGROUND

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In order to best reflect on how Legends 2023 went, we first wanted to provide context about our operating structure to give an honest reflection on how we did and what we can do better.

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Legends is a subcommittee of Desi Dance Network Inc. (DDN Inc.), a Non-Profit Organization that was formally founded in 2014 whose mission is to empower South Asian artists by creating and developing safe spaces for artistic and creative growth. Legends is DDN Inc.’s signature event to support this mission. The Directors of Legends serve as board members of DDN Inc., ensuring alignment between Legends and DDN’s values. 

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There are a few unique aspects about Legends that distinguish our organization from most competition boards:

1. Distributed team - Our board consists of qualified and experienced members from all over the country that were selected from a competitive pool of applicants. The diversity of perspectives and experiences is crucial to our success, but it does create the challenge to coordinate and plan fully remotely as a fully virtual team across timezones.
2. Event planning for a city we’re not located in - Most competitions have the advantage of being able to physically interact with and map out all of their event logistics in a city that they’re very familiar with. Our logistics team has to create an agile weekend plan while also quickly adapting to unforeseen issues in a city they’re not necessarily located in or familiar with. 
3. Rotating cities from year to year - One of the perks of Legends is that we strive to choose a new city every year in order to create a new experience for all the dancers and audience members that attend while also making our event accessible to the different South Asian communities across the country. Each city has a completely different set of logistical challenges, giving our team a heightened challenge each year.
4. Season management - Legends further has the task of working with our Partner Competitions to create and manage a competition framework and maintain the integrity of the circuit. We also work with our partner competitions to create judging panels and train judges to ensure consistency between competitions. 

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In order to meet these challenges and successfully manage a full competition season, we've deliberately divided our team into 11 subcommittees that work seamlessly together. You can read more about the work that each individual committee does here. *If you're interested in the work that any of the committees do, apply for a position on Legends Board! Applications are open until July 12th. 

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While each team manages their own internal meeting cadence (typically meeting once a week), our team as a whole has bi-weekly syncs until January, after which we have weekly syncs to ensure we’re all on the same page to successfully oversee competition season and fully prepared to execute for Legends weekend.

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Our work as part of Legends can be best understood through a timeline of the major successive projects that we oversaw over the course of the year:

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Partner Competition Selection

1. Timeline: Late August - September
   
2. Committees Involved: Directors, Registration, DDN S&W
3. Project Overview: These committees work together to interview and select our Legends Partner Competitions for the season. They look to assess improvements from previous years feedback as well as the directors plans for the current year. Legends works with DDN Safety & Wellness to gather feedback from competitions as well as to assess the bandwidth of how many partner competitions DDN can support. 

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SUAV (Audition Videos)

1. Timeline: October-November
2. Committees Involved: Directors, Tech, Registration
3. Project Overview: Legends’ Standard Audition Video Viewing process was introduced last year in an effort to create more equal opportunities for teams to be assed and selected for partner competitions. The sheets used for this process are created and monitored by the Legends Tech Chairs. 

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PC Judging Endorsements Selection

1. Timeline: November - December
2. Committees Involved: Directors, Judging Relations, Registration
3. Project Overview: Legends Judging Relations Chairs work with Directors to review all applications to endorse them for our database. Our Judging Chairs also work with Partner Competitions to create their judging panels. They aim to ensure panels are balanced in regards to experience and style, while respecting what accommodations Partner Competitions are able to offer. 

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Liaison Recruitment

1. Timeline: December - January 
2. Committees Involved: Directors, Liaison Chairs
3. Project Overview: Liaison Chairs own the Legends Liaison application, interview, and decision process. They are also responsible for training and leading liaisons during Legends Weekend. 

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Partner Competitions

1. Timeline: Nov - March 
2. Committees Involved: Directors, DDN S&W, Registration, Judging Relations, CI&T (Tech), Hospitality, Legends Board In-person Reps, Media & Design, Public Relations
3. Project Overview: The Partner Competition season spans the fall and spring for our circuit. Many committees from Legends are involved in the planning and execution of our season. They work closely with Partner Competitions to ensure they are supported with resources and follow up on team experiences and concerns to ensure quality is at the forefront of the dancer experience. 

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Legends Album:

1. Timeline: February - April
2. Committees Involved: Directors, External Relations
3. Project Overview: Legends External Relations Chairs are tasked with developing the album concept and mentoring the chosen producers. This project aims to provide growth & visibility to new and existing producers. 

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Legends Weekend

1. Timeline: August - May
2. Committees Involved: All of Legends Board, DDN S&W, DDN Exec, Legends Liaisons & Staff 
3. Project Overview: Legends weekend is the culmination of our circuits season as the top 8-10 teams take the stage at a national level. Throughout the year, we work with several venues, hotels, and vendors to select a city and create a logistical plan that will create the best experience possible for dancers and audience members alike. We also recruit a team of volunteers and liaisons to successfully support all aspects of the weekend and team experience, and we hire a team of media vendors to support all photography, videography, and DJing needs throughout the weekend. Finally, we diligently create a hospitality plan (food, mixer, merch and swag, etc.) that will create a memorable and seamless experience for all dancers.

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LEGENDS 2023 SUCCESS STORIES

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We’re extremely proud of the work we put in this past year over the course of the season and during Legends weekend. There are a few specific success stories that we’d like to highlight:

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Legends Weekend Logistics - Given the immense difficulty of finding event venues post-pandemic, our team did a terrific job of securing fantastic venues for the mixer, show, and afterparty with very little lead time. We're proud that we were still able to deliver the experience we wanted to for our audience members and our dancers despite these heightened challenges. Our show was incredible because the venue staff was amazing to work with and had all production capabilities to ensure each team could fully execute the set that they dreamed of. The afterparty went better than we could have imagined; we received amazing feedback about how the venue we chose provided many activities beyond the dance floor and drinks, and how the layout and open space outside was refreshing and airy. 

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ELO System - As the caliber of teams keeps on improving year after year, competition in the circuit continues to get more cutthroat as the margins separating teams continues to diminish, making it extremely difficult to determine who the best teams are. While there’s no perfect system, it’s impossible to argue that any team performing at Legends this past year didn’t deserve to be there. We also implemented the placeholder team system successfully this year, enabling us to better account for teams who ended up not making it to a competition but weren’t disqualified. This is a lasting consequence of the pandemic; some teams are still struggling with finances and team structure causing some teams to have to pull out of competitions. We were able to manage all of these instances.

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LEGENDS 2024 POINTS OF DISCUSSION

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We’re constantly on the lookout for ways that we can improve as an organization and continue to deliver the best possible experience for all dancers in the circuit. With that in mind, here are a few things that will be top of mind for our organization heading into this upcoming season:

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Implementation of SUAV (Standardized and Uniform Audition Video Process) - Coming into this year, we had received feedback about possible bias in the audition video viewing process for several competitions. As a result, to minimize bias, we implemented a consistent process for audition video viewing and lineup selection for our partner competitions. We did this in order to give teams a truly unbiased opportunity in their competition applications. We’ll be reviewing feedback from last year to see how much this system truly minimized bias in the audition video process as well as what we can do differently to improve. 

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Team Accountability - Over the years, especially as competitiveness in the circuit continues to rise, we have noticed an uptick of difficult scenarios to manage. This past year specifically, we encountered several situations where teams exhibited detrimental and sometimes downright destructive behavior that made things extremely difficult for competition boards to handle. Setting expectations for team behavioral conduct is a priority for us heading into this upcoming season. While we want everyone attending competitions to have lots of fun with their teammates and friends, we need to set boundaries on acceptable conduct and identify a system to hold teams accountable. 

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Partner Competitions - This past year, we selected the most partner competitions that we’ve ever had, selecting 26 total. There’s a lot to reflect on and discuss regarding the implications that this many partner competitions had on the circuit overall:

1. Do we believe that increasing the total number of competitions increased the accessibility of competitions for teams, bringing newer teams into the fold? 
2. With this many competitions to manage, are we spreading ourselves too thin as an organization in terms of manpower and resources we can offer, hamstringing our ability to adequately support our partner competitions?
3. Is the quantity of overall competitions reducing the competitiveness of each individual competition in a way that makes it less enjoyable for viewers and teams? Should we view Legends partner competitions as a place for the top teams to compete against each other week in and week out, or a place to identify who the best teams are by isolating the teams winning week in and week out?
4. Are the number of competitions creating competitive incentives for teams to travel, compete, and spend more than they otherwise would?
5. Are we straining our community capacity of qualified judges and media vendors?

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Our team is sourcing feedback and discussing all of the above points, and will keep these in mind going into partner competition interviews. 

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Legends 2024 Location - Even though Charlotte wasn't the city we had in mind when we started planning for Legends 2023, we learned a lot from the experience of holding Legends in a smaller city than in the past. While it didn't have the glamor of a larger city, it did provide us more flexibility and control of the experience while also being more financially reasonable for teams. We’ll pull on the experience we gained from this past year as well as years past to determine what kind of city and location creates the best experience for dancers and attendees alike. 

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Judging and Scoring - Teams are pushing creative boundaries more than ever, and we’re starting to see more variety in terms of dance styles employed and storytelling approaches across the circuit. This is amazing to see, but creates two challenges for us:

1. Does our rubric clearly outline community priorities, such as creativity and freedom, and how can we ensure that this subjective process is appropriately quantified? 
2. How can we better support our judges to be able to evaluate a greater variety of sets? What kinds of judges are best suited for this?

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CONCLUSION

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We’re very excited to begin working towards Legends 2024, and already have lots on our mind to consider as we start the planning process. If you have feedback from this past year that you’d like to share going into this upcoming season, don’t hesitate to reach out to exec@desidancenetwork.org! 

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If anything you’ve read above interests you or if you’d like to be a part of the work that we’re doing, please apply to join our board! We’ll be releasing applications shortly.

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Stay tuned for a DDN newsletter coming this fall. If you’re interested in being a part of the initiative, please reach out at exec@desidancenetwork.org!

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