Anonymous. If as you seem to think that Amateurs in your country can judge competitions. Then there is little hope of having a healthy competition scene in your country.
These are the rules in my country
Page 41. An Adjudicator's Licence shall only be granted to people who hold a current valid adjudicator's accreditation issued by the Accreditation Commission. Actually I think you might have been misinformed or somebody or group have been breaking the rules.. We had a situation here where an Amateur Ballroom Champion at a Sporting Club was asked to judge an enter on the floor, nothing serious competition. It wasn't even Ballroom . It was Rock and Roll. The authorities hit him with a lengthy ban. So he immediately turned Professional and later won his same title as a Professional.

"Why else would a couple travel a total of 2000 miles when they are a better dancer than that judge,"

That sounds more like a problem in judge selection than in corruption.

This is the kind of thing that will only happen more frequently if you move to having politically qualified judges without personal dance expertise - instead of having the true experts (by and large the same people as the desirable coaches) do the judging.

This attitude of yours that the best judges are the same people as the best teachers simply reflects the mindset that you have developed to justify the approach that you have taken in dancing.

That same thinking also holds that the best dancers are always the best teachers, a proposition that is refuted simple by reversing its elements.



jj

"This is the kind of thing that will only happen more frequently if you move to having politically qualified judges without personal dance expertise - instead of having the true experts (by and large the same people as the desirable coaches) do the judging.

"This attitude of yours that the best judges are the same people as the best teachers... That same thinking also holds that the best dancers are always the best teachers"

You have a nasty habit of reading things that have not been said.

What I said was, "the true experts (by and large the same people as the desirable coaches)"

This is different from what you imagined I said in two key respects:

1) "by and large" does not equal "are always"

2) I did not say that the best dancers are the best teacher. I compared those desirable as JUDGES to those desirable as COACHES. Both skills can well leverage personal dance ability, but both require externalizing it to a situation that one is not physically a part of - which is one of the major areas where good dancers may fail in judging or coaching.

It's close enough that the meaning is essentialy the same.


I never said that you did (now who is "reading things that have not been said"?). I simply used this proposition to demonstrate your lack of logic.


Desirable according to whom and on what basis? Desirable because of their familiarity with your "dancing" thanks to those sesssions for which you paid inflated fees?

You cannot externalize ability; you can only externalize experience. You have put yourself into a position where you must argue that teaching experience makes one a better judge than dancing experience alone.

I'll give you an example from a comp that I attended earlier this year. I was with a different partner then, a very young woman with only a year's experience, almost none of it in Latin.

As we watched the Latin competitions, this supposedly unknowledgeable dancer correctly identified the winning couple in four of the five heats that we observed (I only picked two) and these were closely matched competitions.



jj

"1) "by and large" does not equal "are always"

It's close enough that the meaning is essentialy the same."

No, it's not. One states a general case but allows for exceptions. The other does not permit exceptions.

"2) I did not say that the best dancers are the best teacher.

I never said that you did (now who is "reading things that have not been said"?). I simply used this proposition to demonstrate your lack of logic."

But the proposition that you used was not one I made, instead it's something different that you made up.

"I compared those desirable as JUDGES to those desirable as COACHES.

Desirable according to whom and on what basis?"

Desired as coaches by top professional and amateur couples.

"You have put yourself into a position where you must argue that teaching experience makes one a better judge than dancing experience alone."

I have not made that claim.

What I have said is that the there's a large overlap between the people desirable in both roles - they tend to be good at them for the same reason.

"I'll give you an example from a comp that I attended earlier this year. I was with a different partner then, a very young woman with only a year's experience, almost none of it in Latin.

As we watched the Latin competitions, this supposedly unknowledgeable dancer correctly identified the winning couple in four of the five heats that we observed (I only picked two) and these were closely matched competitions."

Yes, sometimes it's fairly easy.

Sometimes it isn't.

And your example still ignores the flaw I made earlier, that you are seeing dancing that is targeted to the usual need to satisfy relatively experience-expert judges. If the dancers knew they were always going to be judged by non-dancers off the street, or alternately by bureaucrats with a technical merit point table, the character of their dancing might well change over time from what it is now. That's not just speculation - it's happened in skating.

Nowhere in this thread or on this board have I suggested using "non-dancers off the street" to judge dance competitions. If you're going to use a "straw man" argument you need to find one that is at least in the realm of possibility.

Guess what? Dancing is going to change over time whether new judging rules are created or not. Currents come and go in all human activity, organized or not.

I strongly suspect - and have seen no reason to believe otherwise - that the judges whom you claim to be desirable as coaches are so desirable not because of their dancing expertise but because they can affect the outcome of a competition.

I know for a fact that judges in pro/am competitions have told competitors to use certain teachers if they want better scores.

As another poster - I think that it was Ginger pointed out - this aspect of dance competition is just one giant feedback loop.



jj

"I strongly suspect - and have seen no reason to believe otherwise - that the judges whom you claim to be desirable as coaches are so desirable not because of their dancing expertise but because they can affect the outcome of a competition."

You "have seen no reason to believe otherwise" only because you continue to ignore what has been said here, which is that these coaches are popular as coaches even with dancers who do not expect to be judged by them any time in the near future. Thus the only way they can affect the outcome is by improving the dancing - which is after all why we take coaching.

"I know for a fact that judges in pro/am competitions have told competitors to use certain teachers if they want better scores."

First, you can not ignore the legitimate side of that: better guidance generally will result in better performance, if the dancers implement that guidance.

But more importantly, the primary subject of my comments is not pro/am competitions, but professional and amateur ones. There are major differences, and it's well known that pro-am is in many cases as much or more about the money as it is about the dancing. It's actually been admitted in the official communication of various dance organizations that pro/am is ultimately treated as "dance school business" rather than a form of competition. If you look at the rulebooks, a number of key fairness rules and procedures officially apply only to the professional and championship amateur divisions - in other words, the only divisions that the organization is really worried about the competitive legitimacy of.

You have offered nothing but insubstantial generalizations about coaching and dancing.

You claim that the best dancers (I suppose meaning those with the highest scores in competition) all owe their success to using "high-level" coaching.

I suspect that the true reason for their success is the fact that these same folks have more time to spend on the floor and are able to practice more than most amateurs can afford to do.

Of course, nothing is going to change your mind and I don't care. I want readers on this forum - especially new ones - to understand that the advice that you give is prejudiced by your own narrow - and elitist - view of Ballroom.

You complain that I ignore statements that you make in your posts. You're correct; I do so because you have no real credibility.

I have willingly disclosed facts about my own experiences and background in ballroom because anyone reading my posts deserves to know the framework within which I approach dancing. Many other posters do the same.

You, on the other hand, continually throw up silly reasons for not being forthcoming about your own background, claiming that the particulars of your experience are not relevant to the discussion at hand.

What possible reason could you have for refusing to tell us whether or not you have an amateur partner? That fact is important because preparing with an amateur partner is entirely different than preparing with a professional. And yes, I have done both.

Perhaps I just have more respect for people than you do.



jj

"You claim that the best dancers (I suppose meaning those with the highest scores in competition) all owe their success to using "high-level" coaching."

No, that is not my claim. My claim is that they all use it as one of the tools to achieve success. They would be fools not to.

"I suspect that the true reason for their success is the fact that these same folks have more time to spend on the floor and are able to practice more than most amateurs can afford to do."

Both are factors. Your mistake is in thinking that hard work explain it all - it doesn't. You need the best guidance as well. Good guidance can save you years of wasting work in the wrong direction. You will still have to work hard, but you will be working on the the right things.

You've also noticed that the advanced amateurs are closer to professional in their habits than most amateurs. Professionals in any field do not waste their time with consumer grade tools when it is not cost effective to do so. They buy professional grade tools when their greater cost is justified. Paying twice the normal lesson rate to occasional work with the best coaches in the world is in many cases a very sound investment in the right tools for the job.