Last summer at the NCPA Summit the Board along with all the participating groups had a great discussion about how we could potentially make the first show of the year more valuable to the participating groups, given that the reality of an early February show is that most groups will not have a finished show, and will already have a long list of beats to clean.

Here is the plan we’ve come up with, which mirrors how we ran the first show in 2022:

1) Interval times will be increased by 2 minutes.

• A Class will receive 11 total minutes (up from 9)
• Open Class will receive 12 total minutes (up from 10)
• World Class will receive 13 total minutes (up from 11)

2) Groups will be encouraged to use their full allotted time.

• At the conclusion of your show, feel free to reset to a particular moment of your show and run it again. Use the opportunity to get additional reps on challenging parts of the show, exciting parts of the show, things you just learned, or whatever you feel would best benefit your program
• This is not a rehearsal – no metronomes, staff on the floor, etc – keep it in the spirit of the performance
• You should decide ahead of time how you are planning to use your time, and communicate this to your kids, so that it is as seamless and organized as possible
• Judges will stop judging at the conclusion of your initial performance; anything you do afterwards is purely in the spirit of providing your kids additional time on the floor
• While not factoring into their numbers, Judges will continue to provide constructive commentary on anything you do during post-performance

3) No penalties will be assessed for exceeding your interval time…but please don’t exceed your interval time 🙂

• To ensure you feel comfortable leveraging your full time, we will not penalize you for going a bit over
• You will still receive a written record of your original performance time for future planning
• An NCPA representative will alert you when there are 2 minutes remaining in your interval time

4) Only 2 judges will judge this first show, with their primary focus being Effect-Music and Effect-Visual.

• The best feedback you can receive early in the season is about how your show is coming together, so you can make good decisions on show design while there is still time to make adjustments. Thus we are eliminating the Performance-Music and Performance-Visual captions for this show only, to put more focus on “the big picture”
• The Effect -Music and Effect -Visual judges will be encouraged where appropriate to speak outside their captions to help craft the best feedback they believe they can provide for you
• Scores will be weighted 60% Effect -Music, 40% Effect -Visual

5) Critique will begin with an overview from Caleb Rothe, followed by increased time with each of the two judges.

• Immediately after the conclusion of the show, prior to Critique starting, Caleb Rothe will speak for 15 minutes to the group about maximizing your critique time through the season, preparing for critique, and other high-level observations from the day
• Following this we will begin Critique – you will receive 4 minutes with each judge, as opposed to the normal 3 minutes

These changes will apply ONLY to Show 1 @ American Canyon HS. During and after the show please take note of things you liked or didn’t like, and we will all debrief at this year’s summit. We are hoping this helps provide a more valuable early season show experience, and will welcome your feedback on how we can keep improving!