Hoping someone could help, as I am confused.

I was looking at the Atlanta regional website, the regional to be held in October. They have a category that is called open VW, both smooth and standard. It states silver and above.... This is what I dont understand..

I thought that open meant novice or above, so I dont understand where the silver would come into play or what it means ...

Looks more like it's open elgibility rather than open choreography. Probably the silver and up restriction is that they don't want people who would be unable to move with the flow of traffic.

But at the outrageous prices this competition charges, you'd want to contact them and find out exactly what it means before registering.

Janet, at some comps they'll make categories called "Open Silver" or "Open Gold." In those cases, "Open Silver" means that you can dance Silver and Gold steps; "Open Gold" would mean you could dance Gold and throw in some out-of-syllabus steps. These categories are very often used in Pro/Am competitions, but not so much in amateur comps.

I agree with Anonymous that you should check with them to be absolutely sure.

Those categories are NEVER used in Amateur events - they are Pro-Am only.

Never say never!!, as this comp IS offering an open dance at silver and above @ the amatuar level. If you have an opportunity to look at this regional site you will see that they are describing this category as a "fun" category....

Thanks to Laura and "A" for helping me to understand this category...

Actually, I love that this is being offered.... As a single dance entry, it gives us the opporunity to dance a few open steps, where we normally would not have the opportunity to do so...
It is a great introduction(and no stress) to open...

Janet,. Surly Open means exactly that. All in together. no grades.

Thanks Don... This has been a confusion to us, and lately we have gained a better understanding of the category...

For the past two years we have been dancing USABDA comps, and prior we have danced comps at NDCA events.. Interesting, in NDCA we are not yet at the level to dance open (Novice)while at USABDA events we are...

After observing novice events a few times at USABDA I concluded that we were at this level. Most, dance silver and gold steps, and added a few open steps... Our last comp (for the first time) we danced novice, and felt our level was comparable with the other dancers.... We were so pleased to be called back....
Our next comp will be Atlanta in October... Our plans our to dance our gold in novice, and asked our coach to replace a wall with open material.... We are starting with putting in runs/hops in the quickstep.... Do you agree with this plan??

Look forward to any response.

Janet, my partner & I danced gold syllabus steps in Novice-level competitions for about seven months (so that was four competitions for us). Then we decided it was time to raise the level of our choreography. We did like you are talking about and "grew" our gold routines into Novice ones rather than scrapping everything and starting over. We changed one wall of quickstep and added two more (so we have six walls for quickstep), we kept one long wall of waltz and got three new ones, and we got an entire new foxtrot. We don't have a tango yet, but we're really working on our movement in the swinging dances so we're holding off on that for now.

So, to me it sounds like you're on a good track. Enjoy!!!

Laura,
Thanks for the words of encourgement... Your last comment also hit home with us....

Often I wonder why the tango is paired with the other dances... We too, spend a lot of time working on our swing lines... Then there is tango. You need to change your mindset out of swing (or in foxtrot), sway. This is a difficult switch for us... We seem to end up lacking the charector of the dance in Tango, and smooth it rather placement of each step.....