-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Date published: Thu, June 17, 2004 Date added to ADN: Thu, June 17, 2004 Source: UNITED STATES DANCE SPORT CHAMPIONSHIPS -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- by American Ballroom Company By popular request, the American Ballroom Company has added an "Open Level" for championship level Pro/Am Students in all styles for the 2004 USDSC, 7-11, September 2004.
"Because many Pro/Am students are far beyond the Gold Level in their dancing, they have requested to have a division higher than Open Gold to compete in the one-dance All American Competition", said John Kimmins, President of American Ballroom Company.
According to the present rules, once a student wins 4 dances in the Open Gold Level, they can no longer enter the All American Single Dance Division and can only dance in the Championship Level. However, many of these students wanted an opportunity to dance in the single dances as a prelude to them competing in the Pro/Am Championship Events.
To this end American Ballroom Company has added a new Level that is now considered Open and will give those students who have won the Open Gold Level and opportunity to continue to enjoy their dancing without being penalized for winning. Any and all championships level Pro/Am Couples are eligible to dance in this level without concern of becoming ineligible if they win.
A new entry form showing the Open Level selection has been added to the entry form available at our website www.usdsc.com then look under registration for a copy of the entry form.
This isn't exactly another Pro/Am level -- this exact event is already done at other NDCA-sanctioned competitions. The USDSC was a bit of an anomoly in that once you got to Open Gold level in the single-dance events, there was no where else to go because they didn't offer these events.
I'm a relatively new student at a Fred Astaire Dance Studio and I need information and advice from Pro-Am students in other dance studios. I would love to compete in Pro-Am competitions and there is one coming up the first week in September in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Here is my problem. The owner of this studio presented me with a package of $3,000.00 to compete. This package included tickets to all the nightly events, airfare, food, $100 per-dance, studio fee and hotel for the teachers and myself. I don't know whether this is high or low since I've never competed in a big competition, but this seems really high to me.
Is this the cost in other dance studios? How many competitions do most Pro-Am students do per year? Is everyone extremely rich who participates in this hobby? Going online I found out there are numerous competitions all year round. If I wanted to compete in four competitions a year in my studio, it would be $12,000.00 just to compete, not counting lessons. I have a good job but I can't afford to pay this for each competition.
There must be a less expensive way to compete. Can anyone out there help me find out how I can compete for a reasonable cost? Any advice would be greatly appreciated.
<am>
Posted
Find an amateur partner and compete in Amateur competitions. Many college competitions are open to all amateurs and registration for those are usually around $25 per person. When you compete Pro-Am, you're probably paying for yourself to compete, your Pro to compete, your hotel room, your Pro's hotel room, plus a little bit on the top for the studio to make a profit... and the list goes on. Hope you can find an amateur partner!! Good luck.
quote:Originally posted by new to dance: I'm a relatively new student at a Fred Astaire Dance Studio and I need information and advice from Pro-Am students in other dance studios.
Welcome! Years ago I took lessons at a Fred Astaire, and also danced in a few of their smaller competitions.
quote:I would love to compete in Pro-Am competitions and there is one coming up the first week in September in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.
Do you happen to know the name of this competition? Is it the United States Dance Sport Championships at the Westin in Hollywood, Florida? I ask because some competitions are more expensive than others, so it helps to know just which one you are going to.
quote:Here is my problem. The owner of this studio presented me with a package of $3,000.00 to compete. This package included tickets to all the nightly events, airfare, food, $100 per-dance, studio fee and hotel for the teachers and myself. I don't know whether this is high or low since I've never competed in a big competition, but this seems really high to me.
It's difficult to say without knowing what competition it is, how many competitive events you would be entering, what hotel it is, and where you're flying from. It could be a decent deal, but then again it might not be. Often the studios who put together packages add a significant mark-up to the component costs.
quote:Is this the cost in other dance studios?
You'll find that the pricing structure varies, and that in general the pricing structure from the chain studios tends to be the most expensive.
quote:How many competitions do most Pro-Am students do per year?
Depends...some people do three or four per year, others do one or two per month.
quote:Is everyone extremely rich who participates in this hobby?
No, but the people who dance in the most competitions obviously have a lot more disposable income to spend on dancing than the rest of us! There are ways to save money, though.
First of all, the only way to determine if your package is worth it is to ask questions and do some research. Look up the cost of plane tickets and the hotel room on the web. Compare the ballroom ticket fees to what you see on the web. Add it all up and decide if you think it's reasonable or not. Does the $3000 include your per-event entry fees? How much are they? How many events do they assume you are going to enter? Do you even want to dance in that many?
Here are some suggestions for saving money:
Find out the a la carte costs for everything. If the studio won't tell you and you can't find the information elsewhere, then that's a red flag to me. The studio shouldn't have to withold information in order to get you to buy their package.
Don't go to "away" competitions. You won't have to pay for hotel, airfare, or your share of your teacher's travelling expenses if you don't leave your home area in the first place.
Don't dance in more events than you want to. Some studios try to convince their students to do lots and lots of entries, but what you don't realize is that Pro/Am events tend to have small fields, and some of the time you go out there there might be just yourself or one or two other dancers. Your teacher might tell you that it's good for you to dance a lot of entries for the "experience," but the truth is that you know what is best for your own pocketbook. Personally, I don't see the point in dancing more than 10 individual single-dance events in each style.
$100 per dance, if it includes the entry fee as well as the fee for your teacher to dance with you, isn't too bad, but to me it does seem high. For years I paid half that, and then my teacher raised his prices so that I'm paying about 70% of that. Is your teacher an accomplished pro with a good competitive history in both Pro and Pro/Am events? The best teachers tend to charge the most for competitions.
I take lessons from an independent teacher who is not affiliated with any one studio. I probably do six competitions per year, four in my city, one in a city that requires a short shuttle plane trip or a long drive, and one that's farther away. My teacher's fees are very basic: a per-dance fee to him, and my share of his travel expenses, split evenly amongst all his students who will be at the event. I usually dance in 5 to 10 single-dance events, and one multi-dance event (usually the scholarship). I book my own hotel and plane tickets. I don't always stay at the competition hotel, and I only buy tickets to the sessions that interest me.
I'm dancing in a competition near my home town at the end of this month and my costs to compete were a grand total of $573. This is for four single dance events, one four-dance multi-dance event, tickets to the ballroom for my session and for one of the evening sessions, dinner at the competition, and all fees to my teacher. It's not cheap but it's something I can afford.
I'm planning to go to a very large competition (it might be the largest Pro/Am comp of the year) far from home in November, I'm budgeting $2000 for it, this covers everything I actually want to pay for except food: hotel, my plane ticket, fees to my teacher and entry fees for 8 single-dance events and a scholarship, and tickets to the ballroom. If I were to stay for the whole thing to watch all the evening events, I would budget about $2500. So, in that light, $3000 doesn't sound too far out of line if you're in fact going to the USDSC.
The absolute cheapest way to go is to find an amateur partner, but that is much more easily said than done. If your studio does not support your efforts to find an amateur partner, then that is also a red flag to me. Some studios view their Pro/Am students with proprietary interest and so don't like them pairing up with other students because then there's no income from Pro/Am competitions. If you are fortunate enough to find an amateur you can compete with, you'll significantly lower the cost of competition. There's still airfare and hotels for away comps, but at local comps you can enter for as low as $25 for all the events you want to dance. The price point for amateur competition starts around this level, and rises to as high as $300 per couple for two events. But still this is less than what you pay for Pro/Am because you're not paying your partner to dance with you and because the entry fees for regular amateur events are substantially less than for Pro/Am or the "Student/Student" events.
I do Gold Pro-Am and my teacher is not near this expensive. You may have to change studios in order to find one that is more reasonable. Most studios are reputable and only charge around $40 per dance. Many don't charge you for hotels, flights, food, etc., because they consider that by motivating you to go to competitions, you take more lessons and that's how they make money.
Go online and shop around in your area for studios that do a lot of competitions. Don't be afraid to ask direct questions about how much they charge for comps. If the answers aren't to your liking, keep shopping around. Look at this the same way you would if you were buying a house (you wouldn't buy without looking at many) because the lessons alone, over time, can be the equivalent of a down payment.
Unfortunately, like most things, the dance world has its share of rip-off artist and con men. You are smart to question those exorbitant fees.
Good luck.
<new to dance>
Posted
Laura,
I don't want to say where I'm from but the competition is at the Westin Diplomat in Hollywood, FL.
Doing the math; hotel, air, tickets to events, dances and according to Gold dancer, $40 per dance, it still only comes to $2,000. So it looks as if I'm being charged a $1,000 extra. I don't have an extra $1,000 to give to anyone.
Gold dancer, thanks for the advice. I will look around at other dance studios in my area and ask many questions.
quote:Originally posted by new to dance: Doing the math; hotel, air, tickets to events, dances and according to Gold dancer, $40 per dance, it still only comes to $2,000.
You are looking at going to the USDSC. The entry fees for this are much higher than $40 per dance. When I went two years ago it was $55 per dance, and I think it's up to $60 now. That doesn't even include the per-dance fee that goes to your teacher. If the studio told you it was $100 per dance and that included your teacher's fees and your entry fees then that's exactly in line with what I would be expecting to pay at that competition too. The USDSC is the probably the most expensive competition of the year.
Your ticket to the ballroom in included in the fee for the sessions you are competing in, and tickets for all the evening sessions come to $290. Hotel rooms at the Westin Diplomat are $155 per night + tax (which I think is 12.5%).
If I were going to this event (and I'm not), it would cost me about $2850 for 8 events plus the US Championship, 5 nights hotel at the Westin, airfare, and admission to the evening sessions Tuesday-Friday. The airfare component for me is about $215.
So now you've got a some comparable data to look at. Is this going to be your first competition ever? In that case, I personally wouldn't spend all that time and money to go to something as big and as expensive as the USDSC! If possible, do something local your first few times until you know for sure if it's worth it for yourself to spend this kind of money.
I've read the responses to the Pro-Am questions, and am pleased that a newcomer is getting good advice NOW. Perhaps a little story will help to push the discussion:
I started at one of those infamous franchise studios right here in Boston, and was snowed from the start. Never having experienced such lethal sales pressure, I went along for a while -- a few thousand of a while. The owner, who could barely disguise his greed, was not unknown to openly brag about the "goldmine that walked through the door". He was, and still is, notorious for price-gouging and tap-dancng around the truth. He even coerced students into not discussing lesson or travel package specifics with each other, thus buying valuable manipulative leverage. Luckily (for me), he pushed the margin of profit too far one time, charging close to $3,000 for a tiny weekend franchise competition not more than 2 hours away, in a small industrial city (hotel rates less than $80/night) within the same state. Any student that wanted to compete had to buy the entire package, or not compete. More experienced students were finally fed up with the vampire treatment. By now many of us had formed outside friendships, and they clued me in. I was very angry. Very. The difficult thing at the time was that there were really only 2 good studios here, and the other was inconvenient. But my eyes were opened. None of us went to the competition.
Just as I was about to walk, 2 lovely Danish dancers came to work at the studio for a year. Slowly, they began to grasp the situation and their dismay became obvious. They were urged, required, to hard-sell their own students. They never bought into the system, and Ironically, were very successful -- the top-grossing teachers at the studio. They had signed a contract for a year, and were good to their word, but never walked the franchise-line. [You would think the franchise would learn from this example.] In the middle of this time, myself and another student decided to compete in Miami (USDSC) with our Danish teacher since he was competing there anyway. We approached the owner with our own figures (beating him to the punch). We came with the cost of the airfare and 1/2 hotel (since he would be going anyway) for our teacher. We found our own airfare and accomodations at a nearby hotel, and paid our own entry fees. The owner countered that we would have to pay not only a huge per-dance fee for our teacher, but for every possible teaching hour that our teacher would be missing while he was gone, plus an exhorbitant "studio fee" -- all even though our teacher would have been going anyway.
Bottom line. Other options opened up here and I finally left that studio. I saw newcomers having their pockets picked, but could not continue to dance there and not clue them in. I spoke my mind and left. Nothing changed. It never will.
On occasion, since Boston is a small city, I am forced to cross paths with said owner. He is unfortunately (especially since he was never a well-trained dancer himslef) the coach of a local university team. There is hardly a college venue that he does not impact negatively, usually involving money. The most recent event was a competition featuring Bryan and Carmen as guests. This owner bought up all the tickets from the captain of his own coaching team and marked them up 400%.
It is easy to get attached to a teacher, and to be reluctant to shop around. But, most dance teachers are wonderful people who teach because they love dance and need to make a living. To the newcomer: avoid franchises if at all possible. You can ask for your money back and they are required to give it, minus a fee. Use the yellow pages and get on the phone. Go to a few ballroom dance nights in our area and talk to people.
