Yup.

But there is a middle path. Call it good dancing - encompasing social dancing within a well educated peer group, and competition entries as an opportunity to show your best, but not competition as "sport" where winning becomes more important than dancing. Always strive for excellence, even if there is no one else present who understands the details of that quest.

Perhaps, also, as part of that middle path is the concept of dancing without choreography.

Listening to the music and sensing where it is going, choosing steps to fit the crescendo or ritard of the musicians, floorcraft- spontaneity.

Jerry

Good is in the eye of the beholder.

Well said Jerry

To AZtony - you get "more pleasure when someone buys me a drink..." . That's because you learnt how to dance well when you were competing.
I agree broadly with what others have said about middle ground. Countless people take up sports like tennis, rugby, or a skill like playing a musical instrument because they enjoy the activity and they take coaching because they want to participate at their true potential - they just want to be good so they can express themselves (even at tennis - believe me).
Dancing is so enjoybale.. i want to win or at least dance well at comps because i enjoy dancing and i dance better the more skillful i get. I'm never going to be a champion (god knows i'm trying!!)or make a real living at it - i do other things for that.
So don't feel bad about spending a couple thousand a year on lessons - it's worth it.

$3000 over 11 months? That's1 or 2 private lessons a week. Not much training, you know, but it's actually a minimal amount of time to put in for a beginner.

Hey, why were you looking to enter a contest with a beginner like this? I'd have assumed that you'd have a better handle on the local 'talent'.

Her inability to hold a frame is due to many things other than the cost of the lessons - many folks think they are learning 'dancing' by taking a few group classes a week. Particularly by 'teachers' who have not advanced in their pursuit past the 'I look good in a bar - hope somepne will buy me a drink when they see that I can shuffle through this song' stage.

I'd actually be suspect of a teacher teaching 'basic steps and pattersn until the student can do them well enough so they can 'pick up more by watching others dance'. Sounds like a good foundation - for creating a bad social dancer ("I just follow - and I learned on the dance floor")...

What IS a double step?

I was entirely new to the area and posted an ad in the local personals for ajiterbug partner. As far as double step goes depending what part of the country your from jiterbug is done in various way. Single time, double time or triple time steps. Now I'm not talking international or American ballroom competition here either. Those of you at the top fifteen percent who claim the territory of excellence one can only aspire to do what you do for your own reasons. Those lower down in the dance stratus merely aspire to move their feet and body as the music inspires them to.
As a sidebar I would like to say that many beginner dancers give up because those at the top seem to look down at them and make them feel that they will never be "good enough". I'd rather seem the on the floor line dancing than not dancing at all.

I would hazard a guess that people don't give up because there are better dancers around them - they give up because clueless 'experts' confront them ("She couldn't even hold a frame") when they are simply social dancers themselves.

Social dancers are not affected by Competitive dancers any more than they are affected by teachers. They look UP to the better dancers. it's the curmudgeony 'old farts' that grumble about the good dancers, hoping to get a drink bought for them because they 'entertained' a beginner.

Trust me, it's a lot harder to entertian schooled dancers. You're right to stay in the bar and dance for beginners - you certainly don't have to learn much, and you can probably get little jobs teaching these folks. After all, how do they know that all you know is a few steps 'on the dance floor'?

Everyone needs encouragement and a goal. Sad to say, your goal is a very low 'bar' (pun intended).

I've had intructors from FA and Am studios refer to me as a dancers dancer.
Your pun glibly shows the snobery that prevails in the dance community. Only a minimum number of dance styles were actually created in the studios. They were created in the nightclubs and dance floors by people developing movement to a particular tempo and rythmn. The styles were then copied by the studios to take advantange of the popularity and make money doing it.

There's two kinds of dancers, those who understand what they are doing and how they learned it, and those who can just do it without knowing why. The kind who can just do may well look down on everyone who can't, because they don't understand that learning is a process that results from effort applied under skilled guidance.

The kind that understand what we do and how we learned it tend to look down on those who are too unfocused to make a real effort to learn. When we're in a more generous mood we rememeber that not everyone really cares as much about quality and so we respect the unschooled social dancers for finding a simpler way to have fun. And when we're feeling insightfull, we recognize that the the problem with the less succesfull students is not always lack of effort, but often just as much lack of effective guidance... we look at someone the natural dancers would call hopeless, and figure they could be good if they really wanted to and found a better teacher.