I think the all of the us vs. them spats in dance are detrimental to dance as a whole. The same thing has happened within country/western with the CWDI/USDWDC thing.

An interesting thing, each year Brigham Young University host the National Profession Ballroom and Youth Latin Championships. As part of this, they have bronze competitions in ballroom and some western dances. The dancers at this level come from the classes taught at the University. For all the good things taught there in Ballroom and Latin, the TWO STEP competition is an embarrassment. The dancers are not dancing good two-step technique. It is quite bad. The dancers are very bouncy, both side-to-side and up-and-down. Unfortunately, this is the only impression that the audience ever gets of two step, or any other country/western dance for that matter.

I've also heard comments from many dancers that my wife and I were too "Ballroom" for country dancers. I've interpreted that to mean that we were working on posture, poise, progression and lines.

The reality is that some of the dances should at least, in theory be identical to what the rest of the world does, East Coast Swing, West Coast Swing and Cha-cha in particular come to mind.

In our area, back in the early nineties, the country instructors could have really benefited from having more dance knowledge. We would have learned a lot faster, and there might have been more couples that really learned lead/follow, technique etc, instead of just learning patterns. Just the same, we had lots of fun.

Now the popularity of country has gone way down, and we have very little opportunity to dance at all, becuase ballroom, latin and swing has not caught on with the masses enough.

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Originally posted by dancergirl3:
Ballroom events don't have social dancing.

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That's not entirely true...as long as they aren't running way behind schedule, all the comps i've been too had social dancing. For the most part, it's 5-10 minutes sandwiched between events, and the floor is packed, but it's better than nothing! I'd like to see more of it, though...like they have at the swing comps.

Jennifer

I agree that there has been a lot more social dancing at the country events I've been to.

We just got back from the big competition at BYU, and there were only a couple of social dances during the two days we were there. I know that they have many more events to run in the schedule, so it's pretty clear why they can't have more social dancing.

The other thing I like about country events was the smaller format, lots of people knew each other and socialized a lot. They also had more vendor booths and you could also sign up for clinics and learn something too. I really enjoyed the dances they held after the comps too.

But, BYU was great too. I've read some people express sour grapes elsewhere in the discussion board about who place where, but to me, it doesn't matter. I just enjoy seeing all of the great dancing. I'm such a fanatic, I bought tickets two minutes after they went on sale. The only people ahead of me actually worked at BYU, so we got to sit in the row right behind the reserved seating for the professionals.

Country has somewhat died out in our area. It has retreated mostly into the bars. There are a few die-hard line dancers still around, but line dancing drives us crazy. Gimme a two-step or WCS!!!

I do pro-am competition in ballroom and am/am in country-western. I was introduced to the wonderful world of partner dancing through country-western and I still love it, although if I had to choose, I would choose dancing ballroom.

Both forms have advantages and disadvantages. Dancing pro-am in ballroom is affordable in CW but much more expensive in ballroom. There does seem to be more and better social or "general" dancing at country comps. Country comps are very "user-friendly" and more casual, which is nice sometimes, although the more I get into ballroom, the less patience I have with some of the more "hokey" or silly goings-on at country competitions.

I have a great deal of respect for the technique and ability of today's country western dancers, especially at the top levels. These folks are wonderful dancers and very entertaining to watch. And, I still think, even after 4 years of ballroom lessons, that country 2-step is the most difficult dance in the world to do well. There is no ballroom dance that is comparable. That's not to say that country is harder than ballroom, it's just that 2-step is very hard to do at a high competitive level. My country partner and I always place very high in chacha and waltz but not so high in 2-step.

I hate the fact that country western does seem to be decreasing in popularity, just as all the competitors are taking lessons and really dancing with good technique.

Ballroomers looking down their noses at country western dancers is a result of ignorance. Good CW dancing is truly just "ballroom with boots."