I hesitate to start this topic up again but I am so frustrated by what I observed at a comp this weekend that I don't seem to be able to stop myself.
I competed in a comp this past weekend which is a relative small comp, I think, that occurs each year in Florida. As an aside, I actually did well for me so this is not a sour grapes posting. However, two things occured which really concern me.
One, it was very obvious that at least one female Amatuer was dancing out of catagory. She competed in every Bronze catagory, open and closed and won first in everything including Bronze Championship rounds. Since she competed Beginner Bronze, I would have assumed that Beginner Bronze was her catagory and that she was just competing up to see what happened. But when she won everything, duh, perhaps she is really a Full Bronze dancer competing down levels to score more points.
I noticed that the attendance was down this year but my teacher said that there were more entries this year. So, out of curiosity, I got out my program from last year and compared the number of students from last year to this. Last year, there were a total of 110 women and 28 men who competed as Ams in the Pro/Ams. This year, at the same comp, there were 72 women and 14 men.
So, that means that fewer people danced more dances. What I am wondering is if this is a new trend that is happening where because of both cost and questionable entry levels, attendance is down so it is going to fall on the shoulders of fewer and fewer people to support the Pro/Am comps by entering more and more heats? The costs of comps for each individual can only go up if there are fewer people among whom to spread the cost.
So, here is my question. Is there anything that we as students can do to try to revamp the Pro/Am situation? Half of my brain says to just accept the situation as is and not make waves. (That would be the part that is rational and is afraid of the repercussions from judges that I might experience by just starting this topic) The other half of my brain thinks that there has to be some way that the organizers, teachers and students could form some kind of a task force group to standardize comps and work out a system that is fair to everyone.
I want to make it very clear that I am not trying to slam the organizer of this comp. However, I am concerned that fewer people seem to be doing Pro/Ams and rather than sitting around complaining, I would like to take a proactive approach to trying to help change the system so that more people would want to compete.
Does anyone have any ideas how to go about doing that?
[ 12-14-2001: Message edited by: NANCY ]
**************** Only title has been edited to reflect recent discussions.
I had an idea, but have no idea where to go with it...a bunch of professional dancers got together and formed the Professional Dancers' Federation (PDF), which got membership in the NDCA and so can send *voting* representatives to NDCA meetings. The PDF's goal is to represent the interests of Professional dancers. For example, it was the PDF that brought the issue of having water in the ballrooms and having 20 minutes between Pro rounds to the NDCA, and got rules concerning these issues discussed and passed.
How about the Pro/Am students forming their own organization? If enough people are interested and membership is large enough then this new group could apply for (and hopefully receive) voting membership in the NDCA.
The trick is, of course, to come up with WIN-WIN solutions for everyone involved. The Pro/Am students can't expect the NDCA to vote for anything that will decrease income at competitions, both for individual teachers and for the competition itself.
So...any suggestions as to if we should even bother to try to start anything? Any ideas on a *constructive* agenda for such a group?
The situation you described really makes me feel frusterated too because it is obvious that students with the money to enter every category are going to be reward based on quantity and not necessarily on merit. I am still pondering the how-to-overcome-this-issue part.
Laura, I love your idea about forming a Pro/Am student organization and I agree with you that the purpose would have to be to come up with win-win solutions for comps so that organizers and teachers don't have to take a financial hit and at the same time, students are not sucked dry and feel like they are competing in a fair arena; asking the Pros who started their organization for ideas on how to start one for students; hoping Dancescape reads this and comes up with a magical solution.
Do you know who is in charge of the NDCA? Maybe we could contact them and ask them if they would be interested in having student representation on their board?
How would we go about getting members of a Student organization? Ideas that come to the top of my head are: Setting up booths at comps; preparing an application for membership with a cover letter and sending it out to all coaches and teachers that any of us know; dividing the country into sections and asking the Pro/Am students who post here to be responsible for contacting as many dance studios in the region as possible and encouraging students to join.
Laura, In my opinion, you have won the poster of the year award for honesty, content, ideas and flair. You will be rewarded for this. I will let you know soon what the reward will be. I think it will be interesting for you. Keep up the posting.
I really like the idea of a task force with representatives from the various groups. That would enable everyone to share their perspective. While some proposals would produce impacts that would be obvious to teachers, students, and competition organizers alike, I'm sure that each group has issues that are either not seen by, or are undervalued by, the others.
Has the NDCA put out any more information on what functions they will perform on behalf of the Pro/Am students if the proposed registration requirement goes into effect?
I've only seen what's on the NDCA's web site (ndca.org, scroll down to the bottom and there's a link to an article about Pro/Am registration).
For some more interesting reading, check out the PDF's web site at pdfusa.org . There's links to the history of how the PDF got started...it was started in part by current NDCA president Brian McDonald.
Also, take a look at the DanceSport Superbowl web site (try the obvious web address or your favorite search engine) to see what a group of competition organizers have done to promote Pro/Am competition. It may give you an idea of what the organizers are seeing as a "win" situation for them.
I'm going to brainstorm on some agenda items. Note: just because I've listed something here doesn't mean I support it or even think it's an approriate item...I'm brainstorming and am writing down everything I've heard:
I. Fairness in competition A. Ams who aren't really amateurs B. Students who dance too far below their level C. Top awards a function of who spends the most money on the most entries. D. Students who dance out of category in syllabus-restricted events
II. Fairness in information A. Students should be able to get entry information for competitions, including entry fees. B. (there needs to be a B...I was always taught in school if there was an A there had to be a B)
III. Good Sportsmanship/Code of Ethics A. The NDCA and I think the PDF have codes of ethics, maybe the Pro/Ams could have one too. B. Besides, if you have a written code, then you have something you can complain about concretely when someone violates it, and so therefore it sounds like a peer grievance board might be nice too. Of course, this would only apply to members, and we can't make membership in the Pro/Am Student association mandatory -- just like membership in the PDF isn't mandatory either.
IV. Promotion of Pro/Am dancing; peer support for Pro/Ams A. An organization that Pro/Am students can belong to could foster a sense of belonging and camraderie for Pro/Am student dancers. B. Pro/Am dancing itself could be showcased (in ways that don't violate NDCA or USABDA rules) C. Work on ways to bring new people in to compete, and on keeping active competitors active.
A few of the obvious selling points a pro-am group could give organizers and coaches to listen to them are that: A) People who feel the comps are fair are likely to do more of them. You won't have so many on-the-fence people like Nancy, or Rob in TN, who do very few or give up completely, B) There'd be less bad-mouthing of the pro-am scene and a better pro-am image might help the sport as a whole, and, C) I would think it would be more pleasant for the coaches not to have the people who don't mind bending the rules taking up so much of their schedule, or the people who want to play fairly whining all the time!
Is that enough to kill some old habits? I have no idea, but I think the first points are pretty sound ones.
If I were an organizer, I would want to do everything I could to promote Pro/Am comps and to increase not just the number of entries but also the number of participants. It seems to me that so far, the organizer's approach seems to be to make the comps as financially appealing to teachers as possible and then leave it up to the teachers to promote the comps to the students.
I can't think of any other sporting event that is handled this way and I wonder if we should stop thinking of dance competitions as a sport and rather think of it as a business?
I am just thinking out loud here but if we approached it from a business standpoint, then the product is the Pro/Am comp and the question is, who is really the consumer, the teachers or the students? Ideally, it should be both since it is Pro - Am. So how do we create a business that appeals to both teachers and students, both financially and from a fairness standpoint?
Does anyone have any idea of how many students actually do Pro/Ams each year? Could someone count the number of Participants at Ohio Star Ball? At Miami? Any other big comps. I don't have the books since I didn't go. I'll count the Herritage participants. Of course, there will be overlapping but at least we could start to get an idea of how many Amateurs there are that actually compete.
Also, if anyone has the count from this year and last year, it would be interesting to see if the number of participants is going up or down at the various comps. It seems like the organizers are mainly concerned with number of entries rather than number of competitors but I admit that may not be an accurate statement.
