I began ballroom lessons at a privately owned studio in late January, and while I have no complaints about the quality of instruction, I have MANY doubts about the salesman tacticts employed by many of the instructors.

Eventually, I would like to compete... However, I've learned that students at my studio have paid $17,000 in order to compete with their instructors in Florida (I live in a mid-Atlantic state). Is this normal? I'm simply wondering if this is what students can expect to pay if they wish to be involved in competitive dancing. If so, I need to focus on another dream, because I don't have a career that can support this kind of expenditure! I suspect, however, that my studio is particularly greedy... but this is my first studio experience, so I can't be certain.

It is not abnormal, but it is not the only option.

Students attending a local one-day competitions to dance with their instructor and not dancing many dances there might spend less than a thousand dollars on the competition itself (though several thousand preparing for it most likely).

Students dancing with each other instead of an instructor could get in and out of a local competition for just a few hundred dollars between them, sometimes less - plus training expenses of course. (Though some married couples probably pay their therapist or divorce lawyers more than it would cost to dance with their instructors)

Thank you! I was hoping there were other options out there, and now I can begin hunting them down!

No, it is not normal to spend that much to go to a competition. Unfortunately, however, studios that charge that much are around -- giving everyone else a black eye when it comes to competitions.

I assume you are doing Pro/Am. Generally, the cost of a Pro/Am competition is based on:

* per-dance-event entry fee, set by the organizers
* per-person ticket fee to enter the ballroom at the competition
* per-dance-teacher-fee, set by the teacher and/or studio
* fee to cover the travel expenses of the student's teacher, including plane tickets, hotel, and meals
* the student's own travel expenses
* package "extras", such as banquet dinners, special cocktail parties, etc

Different studios and different teachers structure their fees differently.

Before you balk at the $17,000 that these people say they are paying, find out what that really includes. Sometimes people go to a competition and dance literally 100 entries. That runs into a LOT of money. The price you heard might be based on that. There is no reason to feel that you need to dance that many entries at a competition. Dancing 5-20 is much more usual and realistic -- and obviously is a huge money savings.

When I used to do Pro/Am I paid whatever the published fees were for ballroom entry tickets and dance entry fees, plus a set fee of $40 per dance to my teacher, plus a share -- divided amongst all the students who went to the competition -- of his ballroom entry tickets and of his airplane and hotel expenses. He did not charge for "lost wages" (since the whole reason he had wages was because he was preparing us for competition, it's not like there were dozens of people back home waiting for him while we were off competing), and he itemized his bills so we always knew what we were paying for. This seemed clear and fair to me. We arranged for and paid for our own personal travel expenses ourselves. I would dance 5-15 entries per competition, and usually didn't bother with the "packages" that included banquet dinners etc.

The most expensive competition I ever went to was the United States National DanceSport Championships in Florida. These are the US Championships for Pro/Am! I think I did 10 entries, and my total bill to my teacher was about $1200. My own travel expenses were about another $1000, and I think I spent about $300 on spectator tickets because I went to a lot of the evening sessions where tickets were something like $70. All in all I spent less than $3000 -- which is a lot of money, but far Far FAR less than the $17,000 that you mentioned above. And this was for the National Pro/Am Championships -- and I got to see the World Pro Latin Championships while I was there!!

In my experience, local competition should cost you less than $1000 to attend.

If you really want to save money, get hooked up with an amateur dance partner. The most expensive amateur competitions in the US don't cost more than about $150 per person to enter, aside from your own personal travel expenses. And there are many competions, often run by local university teams, where non-students can pay about $25 to enter!

Competitive dancing is not a cheap hobby, but it doesn't have to be as exhorbitantly expensive as you have heard from other students at your studio.

Thank you so much for your detailed response! It helps to know that there are so many more options out there -- I'm realizing that my studio really doesn't offer much of a choice.

I'll certainly be using your response as a reference point in the future!

Dear Laura, I was so glad to read your post and thanks for your sharing the experience in detail .
Ballroom dance is wonderful, but some coarches or teachers are greedy and treat their students as payment machines.
I had to quited my first coach who ,I took his private lessons for 18 months , still owes me 49950 ( HK$). I answered : All evidences proved that You told lie in everything and you have never attempted to give back the money which you borrowed from people , Indeed , you lost much more than you got. I don't want to have your any lesson. The money you borrowed is mine ,it is not easy to make money. I had given you a lot of chnaces to learn to respect yourself, your students and art . Obviously, you have been persisting to have negative attitude.
I danced on myself for 6 months, and bought books, DVD to learn during the past 6 months. I know I do love ballroom dance . I must keep dancing to adapt the need of dance; I learnt how to select coaches now. Now I have two coaches. I study hard as usual ,at the same time , I observe them carefully.
As you said, dance is not a cheap hobby. but we have a lot of options based on the correct information , including our goal and ability.
ylchen

I can vouch for all of this. Coming from a racing background, I would run into the same thing. For about four years, my kids raced high-speed go-karts, but we did it on a shoe-string budget. I might spend about $5000 for an entire seasons worth of racing for both karts and the races. Now, I know there were other race teams that spent $50,000-70,000 a year on racing for one kid. Heck, I know of one kid's family that use to enter him in races all over the southwest and across the nation and their racing budget was well over $100,000 a year. I mean, they had a million dollar motorhome and a forty foot trailer with his name plastered all over both, to get from one race weekend to the next. All this just for racing a go-kart!

How does that jive with dancing (pardon the pun )? We would only race locally and would only race the bi-weekly club races. I'm an amateur dancer, just like my kids and I were amateur racers. I'm looking for an amateur partner who would like to dance at the local competitions. We have three fairly decent sized comps each year here in Vegas and that should be plenty for us to have fun and do the competition thing. And it would keep the costs down. Doing the Ohio Star Ball or the Yankee Classic will just be a dream.

I just finished competing with a pro partner at a regional comp. that did not require out of town travel.

My cost was $130 entry for about 18 different dances and about $220 for the teacher to dance all of the dances. This was economical since she was dancing with 5 other guys and they helped pay for her loss of lesson time, dance time, travel--even if it was local and etc. It was a one day event and my total cost with lots of dancing was about $350.

However, some dance teachers are like slick travel agents and will show you an exotic competition locations--Miami, Las Vegas, NY city or wherever they can get you to go. The cost will go up drastically. You have to pay for hotel expenses, food and many banquet expenses,($20 to $60) each dance,4 or 5 day events, entry fees, featured pro shows, airplane tickets , loss of lesson time and so on. It helps some if the pro is dancing with more amateur partners to help pro rate the teachers expenses.

My pro teacher told me that when she worked at her previous out of town studio that the above described local event would have cost me about $12,000 (if this event was out of town). Lots of advanced pros charge $50 per dance, not including all the other expenses mentioned above.

Most Pro Am dancers pay at least 2 to 3,000 dollars per event. It depends on where it is, how many dances, hotel expenses, travel expenses, banquets, shows, loss of lesson time, how many days and so on.

You will notice that most of the Pro Am competitors are older ladies that have trust funds, wealthy husbands, divorce settlements or some independent means to support this very expensive Pro Am endeavor. This is not counting the 2 to 3 lessons per week that you will need to be able to compete.

I know one Pro Am lady that takes 3 to 5 lessons per day with her pro dance partner and another coach pro teaching them. The dancing pro charges $60 per lesson and the coaching pro charges about $90 per lesson. You do the numbers for a year and include that this Pro Am lady does about 5 or 6 exotic location Pro Am events per year.

Your best and most economical way is to keep it local and hope to pro rate with many other students that are dancing with your teacher.

I was involved with the expenses of English Hunter Jumper Horse competition and this is the only thing that I have seen that rivals the expenses of Pro Am dancing.

I've seen this at my studio... wealthy older women who seem to fall prey to the smooth selling techniques of the instructors. I figure some of them must spend close to $100,000/year on competitions and coaching sessions.

I've decided my best bet is to find another studio, since mine doesn't seem to participate in local competitions and only has one student competing at a time, making it impossible to split expenses.

Thanks for your response!