Sorry, Dancero. I just returned from a two and a half week vacation in Spain. I had planned to set up three weeks worth of variations so that my assistant could just plug them in weekly while I was gone, but I ran out of time. She's an extremely competent assistant, but doesn't know the first thing about ballroom dancing, so I couldn't have her do it by herself. I would have needed to prepare them for her.
The good news is, we do have about four brand new variations left before we have to film more, so don't expect reruns anytime this month.
As for clearly labeling the reruns, I considered it a long time ago and decided that it wouldn't be wise. I beleive that a "Rerun" stamp would do nothing other than drive away traffic. Regular visitors know which variations they've seen and which they haven't; It is pointless to remind them of this. New visitors haven't seen any variations, so it's all new to them, rerun or not... the only thing a "rerun" stamp would give them is a negative impression of our site. So I'm not really in favor of that.
I do, however, always state on the homepage when a variation is new, so it's the same thing you're asking for but in reverse. I beleive this gives it a more positive angle.
Re the John Powers clip: Actually, he was the sponsor. I beleive the variation was a Tango step danced by Stephen & Patricia, if memory serves. Great step. Unfortunately, that was one of the old clips that didn't have audio (or it was the one that did have audio, but the audio was unlicensed music), and the source video is now lost.
In order to rerun that variation I would need to recompress the clip which would then drop the video quality lower than it already is (and it's pretty low as is). Instead, I decided to wait and re-film the variation with DV. Unfortunately, I haven't seen Stephen & Patricia in almost a year. My next chance is probably Challenge of Champions in February, and if not then, then definitely Emerald Ball in May. I could re-shoot it with someone else, but for some reason I was of the impression that the person or people who made the request were particularly interested in Stephen & Patricia. If it looks like I won't see them until May, I'll see if I can re-shoot it with someone else as a temporary "stand-in".
There is a Tango variation coming up either this or next week with Melissa and myself, but it may be less extravagant than Stephen & Patricia's style. We do pretty straightforward Int'l stuff. But I hope it will satisfy until we can bring them back (or shoot another American style variation).
As for this week's variation, I will run it tomorrow (Friday). It's 4am now and I'm hittin the hay!
Sincerely,
Jonathan Atkinson www.ballroomdancers.com
