Be sure to vote for ballroom dancing when you run accross polls like this:

http://moneycentral.msn.com/content/CNBCTV/Promos/P92123.asp

IF you care about ballroom dancing (as opposed to this dancesport nonsense), you'd vote against contaminating it with all that olympic stuff.

I'm not particularly in favor of it, either. I just don't see the point. And I've been thinking and talking about this for years, so it's not because I don't have enough information about it or haven't heard all the arguments. I have, and none of them have convinced me that it's a great idea.

As someone who's only been dancing for a year, maybe I'm not seeing all the angles. However, wouldn't having ballroom dance in the Olympics give it more exposure, and perhaps help it grow in popularity? Especially in the U.S., where dance is not as popular as it is in Europe.

Look at the popularity of figure skating at the Winter Games. Who's to say ballroom wouldn't capture some of that audience?

There was a period of time in 1999-2000 when there was a good deal of dancesport on TV in the US. There were shows on NBC, A&E, Bravo, Lifetime, and ESPN. Unfortunately, the ratings for these were not good enough to keep advertisers interested in continuing to support such shows.

A few weeks ago the IOC made a ruling on what sports are being considered to be added in 2012, and dancesport did not make the short list. So, the earliest it will be able to get into the Olympics is 2016 at this point.