Hello, everyone
I'm kind of new here so I want first to thank all of you for the very good forum. I've found a lot of really helpful and interesting things here.
Though I would appreciate a piece of advice I was not able to find so far.

The situation is following: I dance for about a year and I'm going (well, better said "I'd like to go") to my first competition end of the Jan (pro/am with my instructor, of course). I've seen a lot of hints here and in other places that to be a good competitive dancer one has to be rich. Well, now I kind of start to get actual idea what this "rich" means. Extra lessons, costume, shoes, registration, hotel room... My questions are about two last items.

There are six dances we are going to dance and my instructor suggests registering for three consecutive categories. Something like "Full Bronze", "Open Bronze" and "Silver I". So all together it is 18 dances which looks like a lot for me and makes awful lot of money. I'm not sure, actually, does it make sense at all to go for multiple categories? Well, it probably will be more fun and more profitable for him because he charges per dance. But are there any other reasons except these two? And how does it usually happen?

Another question is about the hotel room. This is local competition in the same city we both live. But he says that we still need a room to change, makeup, have some rest and be more comfortable in general. I agree that it definitely will be more comfortable, but what is usually provided by the competition organizers? I thought that changing facilities should be there for sure, shouldn't they?

I would really appreciate some piece of advice here because at the moment total amount of money to spend is simply prohibitive. I'll have either to drop the whole idea altogether (which is really bad ) or to find a way to reduce the price.

Thank you,
rg

A dressing room will be made available at the competition for people to change in. At some competitions, it's a nice room that's usually a small conference room. They'll set aside one for the ladies and one for the men. However, at some competitions all they do is curtain off an area near the stage. This is kind of awful! When it's set up like this, I just change in the bathroom.

When I was competing Pro/Am I usually entered only one or two levels. I never saw the point of doing a lot of dances, it just cost a lot of money and most of the time I was uncontested anyway so there was no point in paying more money to dance.

My advice is don't do anything that you are not comfortable with. If it's your first competition, keep it simple. You don't need to do three levels if you don't want to.

Rita. My advice to you is unless you have lots of money to throw away, get out of pro-am. Find a dance school where you can find a partner . If you are taking lesson and dancing only with a pro you should be ready to dance Gold in six months. There should be no need to dance at a lower category. With a good teacher in one year you should be good enougth for Championship leval. Forget competion until you reach that leval. He will tell you that you need the experience,nonsense,this is only true if you are dancing with a non profess ional or you are a man. The man does all the leading ,you are just following.

"If you are taking lesson and dancing only with a pro you should be ready to dance Gold in six months. There should be no need to dance at a lower category. With a good teacher in one year you should be good enougth for Championship leval. Forget competion until you reach that leval. He will tell you that you need the experience,nonsense,this is only true if you are dancing with a non profess ional or you are a man. The man does all the leading ,you are just following. "

This is only true if your idea of dancing is putting on a show that fools non-experts. To please real judges, you will need years of technique practice to dance at championship level. Along the way, you'll learn (unlike the person who wrote the above) so see through the faking of all those who try to dance that way without benefit of the underlying skills.