Me and my boyfriend are amateur dance competitors. We feel that many schools try to discourage us from doing Amateur/Amateur dancing because they don't make any money off of us. We don't like Pro Am dancing because there are many pitfalls in doing it, such as:



The student believes himself/herself to be really good when they place third or better in their division, when in reality there were only three couples in the division to begin with.

Female students are taught the wrong way to follow, which is the quickest way for the male professionals to make money. When these ladies dance with amateur gentlemen, they are so used to getting manhandled that they cannot follow. Female professionals backlead gentlemen students who believe themselves to be leading, when in reality they are not. This is the quickest way for female professionals to make money.

However, the top Pro Am couples are those who have teachers who spend more time on the correct way to dance.

On the other hand, Pro Am students memorize routines with their teachers and cannot deviate from it when they should be utilizing floorcraft.

Last but not least, extra divisions are created to increase chances of winning for Pro Am students.



These are a few of our comments. Please feel free to post your feelings and thoughts about this topic.


Sincerely,

DJAA

Wow, deja vu -- I could have sworn that you started a thread on this topic a couple of days ago that had a number of replies on it already.

I'm sorry to hear that you have such negative thoughts about ProAm dancers. Please don't forget however that some of these ProAm dancers (not all) are only doing ProAm in order to keep dancing as they haven't had any luck in finding a partner. For them any dancing is better than none. Dancing ProAm is not necessarily what they want to do but they are desparate to keep dancing. Maybe if you realize this you might feel a bit more compassionate towards them.

Most of the coaches I know like to have one or two ProAm partners but prefer teaching couples as they don't have to dance as much and can save their strength for their own practice.

Why are you restarting this post?

I'm wondering what DJAA's point is. They started this thread a few days ago and a bunch of us replied. Then they cut-and-pasted their post into another board (Dance Forums), and that started a huge long discussion there to which they did not contribute to, and now they are back here re-starting a fresh thread with the same cut-and-pasted post. Is DJAA just trying to start a fight, or keeping asking the same question until people come out and agree with their generalizations? It's just kind of odd to me.

DJAA:

You are dead on!!...my thoughts exactly.
If you want to learn to dance properly,
ProAM IS NOT the way to do it.

However, another post is absolutely correct in stating that sometimes it is
a necessary evil. (no partner)

DJAA. We here do not have Pro Am which is a thing completely different to competition dancing. It seems to be structured for those who do not have a partner and in some cases have plenty of money. There is nothing wrong with this. But on one side we have Pro Am and on the other Competition or Serious
Social dancers. Those serious Social could make it to Blackpool . The Pro Am never will.

Anyone who can make it to the town of Blackpool and takes the time to send in their entry fee beforehand can make it onto the floor. Both social couples and couples made of former pro/am students have done so.

sorry, that should be entry form. don't believe their is an entry fee other than admission as spectators pay

This is a perennial dispute in the dance world--despite being boring and pointless. So to anyone beginning dance or thinking about it, pro-am is a perfectly valid way to learn to dance and has a lot of advantages in that you are the sole focus of your teacher for that hour and you don't learn bad habits by having to adjust to another amateur's bad habits. If you want to develop into a well-rounded dancer, it's advisable to dance socially as well so you can learn to lead/follow a wide range of other dancers. But of course, the same is true for amateur couples, if they want to learn to dance with anyone besides their partner.

(Pro-am bashers: please don't try to provoke an argument by responding to this post. I won't be posting again in this thread.)