"I - and I think you - are looking at this more from the point of view of purely amateur competitors who, in general, do not use so many different coaches."

And that's where you are wrong. Active amateur and professional couples make far more use of world-class coaches than any pro/am competitor ever will. It is in these divisions where you encounter the situation where most of the couples have at one time or another studied with most of the judges. And it's these couple who will jump at a chance to work with a top-notch coach, regardless if that person is going to be judging them or not.

The people traveling for the opportunity to work with a studio full of pro/ams are in it for the business, not for the dancing. The people in it for the dancing might work with the occasional pro/am student when they arrive, but it's the pro and amateur couples who are the reason they are there, and who make up the majority of their schedule.

This is pure speculation on your part. You have absolutely no way to substantiate such a claim.

Yes, there is a subset of amateurs who use a variety of instructors (Doll and Scottyboy, for example), usually some of those who can afford to do so. The vast majority of amateurs, however, do not make extensive or even significant use of extra coaching.



jj

"And that's where you are wrong. Active amateur and professional couples make far more use of world-class coaches than any pro/am competitor ever will. It is in these divisions where you encounter the situation where most of the couples have at one time or another studied with most of the judges. And it's these couple who will jump at a chance to work with a top-notch coach, regardless if that person is going to be judging them or not.

This is pure speculation on your part. You have absolutely no way to substantiate such a claim."

It's not speculation, it's fact, as anyone who is part of the real dance world well knows.

"Yes, there is a subset of amateurs who use a variety of instructors"

A subset, yes, but a subset that contains all of the serious competitors. You do not build championship skills under the guidance of your local coach alone.

Well, that certainly wouldn't include you, would it?

You are commiting the rhetorical fallacy of arguing from a basis of authority. You have no such basis. You don't even have a partner.


Again, this a statement that you cannot substantiate other than through an appeal to elitism.

Also, because you define a serious competitor as one who hires all of these "world-class" coaches, this argument is pretty silly.

Championship skills are built by practice. Period.



jj

"It's not speculation, it's fact, as anyone who is part of the real dance world well knows.

Well, that certainly wouldn't include you, would it?"

After pointing out in the other thread that your experience is in a backwater of the dance world dominated and limited by the overmarketing of pro/am, perhaps you should stop making ASSUMPTIONS about the habits of serious professional and amateur competitors...

"Championship skills are built by practice. Period."

If you want to see what practice alone creates, look at average professional couples at less important competitions - highly rehearsed, but still very inefficient. In comparison, rising to the top in either division requires not only heavy practice, but expert guidance to focus that practice on more optimal technique.

Again, you're simply revealing the mindset of people who have bought into a self-justifying feedback loop.

You are identifying the "best couples" as those with the highest finishes in competitions. You also identify these same people as those who have hired the judges who are placing them first for extra coaching.

Gee, isn't it just a bit possible that these finishes are based on something other than the quality of performance?

Ask a top level Latin dancer if he or she honestly believes that Bill Sparks and Kimberly Mitchell were truly the best Latin couple in the US at any time.



jj

"You are identifying the "best couples" as those with the highest finishes in competitions. You also identify these same people as those who have hired the judges who are placing them first for extra coaching."

I don't define them exclusively by results, but their their results are in the majority of cases quite consistent regardless if the judges they take coaching with are engaged to work at a particular competition or not. Most of those coaches are not booked to judge run of the mill competitions anyway - you might occasionally get one or two of them, but you generally won't get a full panel of world class judges outside an event of national or international scope.

Plus you only need to watch them with your own eyes to see that their dancing is fundamentally better - not just rehearsed, but better.

Unless these judges publish lists of their clients, there is no way to support such a judgment. Your overused whine that "real dancers" just know this to be true is meaningless.


If this statement is true then we don't need to continue to use teachers as judges and your entire argument about a limited pool of judging talent is nonsense.



jj

"Unless these judges publish lists of their clients, there is no way to support such a judgment."

It is no great mystery to those in the midst of things who various couples are studying with.

"Plus you only need to watch them with your own eyes to see that their dancing is fundamentally better - not just rehearsed, but better.

If this statement is true then we don't need to continue to use teachers as judges"

We need expert judges for the cases that aren't so obvious. Ironically, they tend to get used more for the situations that are obvious.

You also neglect to consider the ways that dancing can adapt to judging.

The lack of uniformally expert panels at trivial competitions may shape the goals of lower dancers, but it does not affect the more serious ones, who treat such competitions as practice or easy prize money, not an actual goal. But everywhere replace the dancing and teaching experts with non-participants who judge out of a manual, and dancing will probably grow to satisfy the committee-written manual (as skating has) rather than to satisfy those who are a participatory part of it.

OK. Name some people. And tell us the name of your amateur partner while you're at it. My partner is Sandy.


In truth, I have dealt with what is the primary course by which "dancing adapts to judging": money.


Non-teachers are not the same as non-participants. There are experienced amateurs who would make perfectly competent judges.



jj