Rules & Regulations

🎯 Jack & Jill

The key characteristics of a Jack & Jill competition include:

• Random Pairings: Unlike traditional dance competitions where dancers often compete with a chosen partner, Jack & Jill competitions involve random pairings. Dancers are paired up with different partners through a random draw, which can occur before each round of dancing.
• Spontaneity and Improvisation: The format emphasizes the dancers’ ability to adapt and improvise with different partners and to different music. This tests their skills in leading and following, musicality, and overall dance versatility.
• Multiple Rounds: Competitions often have multiple rounds, starting with preliminaries and moving to semi-finals and finals. Dancers are judged individually in the early rounds, and only in the final rounds might they be judged as a couple.
• Music Variety: The music for Jack & Jill competitions is typically chosen by the organizers or DJs and covers a range of tempos and different salsa styles, adding to the challenge for the dancers to showcase their adaptability.
• Judging Criteria: All judges are looking for qualities such as timing, technique, connection with the partner, musical interpretation, and overall presentation. The ability to connect well with a randomly assigned partner is particularly important.
• Community and Fun: While competitive, Jack & Jill competitions are also known for their fun, community-oriented atmosphere. They encourage social interaction and are often a highlight at dance events and festivals.
• Judging Structure: In all rounds prior to the Final (Prelims, Quarterfinals, and Semifinals), dancers are judged individually based on their role (leader or follower). In the Finals, dancers are judged as a couple.

Participation as a Leader or Follower is not gender-based. Dancers are free to choose the category in which they want to compete.

💃 Strictly

Strictly competitions are for pre-arranged couples who sign up and compete together. Unlike Jack & Jill, where partners are randomly assigned, Strictly allows dancers to choose their partner in advance, which means they can develop stronger teamwork, musicality, and styling that suits both dancers. However, choreography is generally not allowed — Strictly remains a lead-follow competition, where the ability to improvise is still a key factor in scoring. Judges typically evaluate timing, technique, connection, and overall performance quality.

🔄 Role Rotation

Role Rotation competitions challenge dancers to take on both leading and following roles within a single dance. This format tests versatility and adaptability, requiring dancers to transition seamlessly between roles while maintaining flow and connection. Each couple must switch roles at least twice. In all rounds prior to the Final (Prelims, Quarterfinals, and Semifinals), dancers are judged individually based on their role (leader or follower). In the Finals, dancers are judged as a couple.

🃏 Classic Jack & Jill / Jackpot & Jill

In Classic Jack & Jill or Jackpot & Jill formats, dancers draw a random partner in the Preliminary Round and remain together with that partner through all subsequent rounds, including the Finals.

Judging: The couple is judged together as a unit in all rounds. This format emphasizes chemistry, adaptability, and consistency over multiple rounds with the same partner.

👨‍⚖️ Number of Judges

A minimum of five judges are required. In the preliminary and semi-final round, an even or odd number of judges may be used: five, six, seven, eight, or nine. In Jack & Jill competitions, one half of the judges may judge leaders, the other half followers.

A final round of a competition must be judged by an odd number of judges: at least five, recommended seven, preferred nine.

📋 Preliminary Round & Semi-Finals

In the preliminary round and, if needed, in the semi-finals, the competitors are not ranked in a specific order — a call-back system is used instead.

Every dancer is judged individually; nevertheless, partnership is an important part of the judging. Every song will be danced with a random partner. This can be determined by rotating or shuffling after/before every song.

The judges select competitors for the next round (essentially yes or no) and determine alternates. The event organizer determines how many competitors are promoted for the next round. There are two possibilities:

• Pre-fixed number of semi-finalists or finalists
• Natural break in the ranking (often it occurs that the first group of ranked competitors are close together before there is a break to the second group with the rest of the ranked competitors)

The callbacks will be announced to the competitors. After the awards, the detailed scores of judges (without head judge) will be posted.

🏆 Final Placements

In the finals, all competitors are placed by the judges by defining a rank: 1st place, 2nd place, 3rd place, etc. Duplicate placements are not allowed.

For the final placement, a majority is needed. If no competitor has a majority of the same placement, the next placement is added to the previous placements until a majority is reached:

• 1st and 2nd place (= 1-2)
• 1st, 2nd and 3rd place (= 1-3)
• and so on…

If two or more competitors have an equal majority, the numerical value of the ordinals for each competitor is added. The competitor with the lower sum is ranked higher. If the sums are still equal, the next placement is added to the previous placements until a difference is found.