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

Yes, of course. these are so obvious, and everyone sees these pitfalls, and agrees with you.

Except for the proam ladies.

They are in the denial that comes with thinking that one hour a week in the arms of an instructor makes them a 'dancer'; that the 'problems' they have in even considering dancesport (not enough time, no 'good' dancers available, that they are really 'gold' level when they are barely prebronze, etc) are only their reasoning to free them from the actual work that it takes to get good, and the subtle pressure that the proam business makes to get these folks to think that they are actually dancing.

One comment made that stands out in my mind: how they all think they dance 'better' with a pro, and that they are getting better by doing it - a woman mentioned how, in the heat of a proam event, 'her pro' took her through the event, even tho she 'blanked out'; they won, and she remarked how thanks to 'her pro' she was able to dance better and make it thru the event. The reply to this lovely story was that she was not dancing better - she was not even learning how to dance better in that situation - all that happened is that the pro did the dancing for both of them. A common occurrence, but denial runs deep... and they still pay thousands for a few minutes on the dancefloor rather than spending those thousands on learning to PARTNER DANCE.

Amateur dancing is by far harder to do.
One problem is finding a stable partner that is willing to practice, pay for lessons, and make a commitment to dancing. One needs a good teacher that can coach an amateur couple and help them grow and keep them balanced--plus keep them from fighting too much.
It is really hard to find a good coach. Most teachers are not trained or experienced in teaching couples for competition. Your selected teacher needs to have been a seasoned competitor. Amateur dancing is less expensive except for the lessons. You don't have to pay a pro to dance with
you and his expenses. The costs of USABA competitions are very reasonable and you can usually dance as many dances as you like without extra expenses.

One of the main reasons for doing Pro Am is the availability of an experienced partner. The population of ballroom dancers would be far less without Pro Am. Without Pro Am dancing, I would have probably given up dancing while my Amateur partner was too busy at work to take lessons. Women really get spoiled with Pro Am dancing since the male partner can lead better and there is not much friction on what is right or wrong. Dancing Pro Am is easier mentally due to one giving up the I'm right and you are wrong attitude. With Amateur dancing lots of time is spent trying to figure out who is doing something incorrectly.

Pro Am can be a good supplement to your Amateur dancing if you get the right teacher. Or you can just take lessons with a teacher solo to help your amateur dancing and not necessarily compete. A good teacher will not wrestle you through your steps. He will teach you to follow with a light lead and allow you to dance your steps. Even if you get an Pro Am partner you will still need a extra coach or teacher to look at your dancing. Your partner can't see everything while dancing with you. This will add to the expense of Pro Am dancing.

Competition dancing is a lot different than social dancing. You usually don't vary your choreography much and you dance 1 or 1 1/2 minutes loops. A competition dancer is not necessarily a good social dancer--it's like comparing apples to oranges.

I've been dancing in both Pro/Am and Amateur partnerships for about 8 years now, and really tire of the nasty Pro/Am bashing that crops up from time to time.

Like with anything else, it depends on who you are working with, what your intention is, what your approach is, etc etc.

For instances, consider the comment regarding the "denial that comes with thinking that one our a week in the arms of an instructor makes them a 'dancer'".

The truth here is that the people who dance Pro/Am and actually learn how to dance are working a lot harder than that. I dance with my teacher about six hours a week, which is actually more than I have been able to practice with most of my previous amateur partners because when you are an adult amateur in your 40's doing this as a hobby and not as a complete and utter lifestyle, it's difficult to schedule. In my last amateur partnership, which lasted three years and ended because my partner injured himself jumping in a ballet class we were taking together, we could only get in about four hours of ballroom practice time per week due to the intersection of when floor time was available in studios and when he actually had time to practice.

The whole "...are only their reasoning to free from from what it takes to get good" is also very insulting. Any one with half a brain realizes that it takes a LOT of work to get "good" at any endeavor. Aside from all the ballroom lessons I take each week (some of which are really more like practice sessions), I also take Pilates and work out at the gym. In my dance sessions I dance with my teacher, dance by myself in front of my teacher, dance rounds both with and without my teacher, and so on. My teacher gives me homework -- things to practice on my own, things to think about, lecture or demonstration videos to watch so that we can talk about them.

Yes, I'm paying a lot of money to do all this, but that's no one's business but my own. I also spent a lot of money when I was dancing amateur, as coachings with top people do not come cheap, and neither do weekly lessons, floor fees for practicing, plus ballet lessons, Pilates, gym memberships, and all that. Anyway, to say I haven't learned to partner dance because I'm doing Pro/Am is insulting to me and to my three previous Pro/Am teachers that I've had over the years -- all of whom had/have the skills and desire to teach me how to dance and not just tow me around the floor for a paycheck. These three teachers also coached amateur couples who did quite well, so it's not like these teachers didn't know how to coach and couldn't produce results.

Let me continue rebutting the insults: how about the one that Pro/Am students consider themselves "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." Oh my, so you really think Pro/Am students are that entirely stupid and lacking in self-awareness? Also, have you been to a Pro/Am comp recently? There were 10 couples in my division at the last one I danced in, and there will be a quarter-final in the next one (so that means at least 14 couples). Granted, that's not like dancing in the Open Amateur Standard at USA Dance Nationals where 48 couples registered, but it's rare to get that many couples at any amateur comp in the USA.

And where do I even begin with a comment like "Female students are taught the wrong way to follow, which is the quickest way for the male professionals to make money." What does that even mean? I'm quite sure there is some sub-par teaching out there where having fun and making money are more important than pressing the student to dance correctly, but that comment made it sound like absolutely no teachers have any pride in their work, let alone skill in teaching. That is completely untrue.

"When these ladies dance with amateur gentlemen, they are so used to getting manhandled that they cannot follow." Again, it depends on the quality of the teacher and the studiousness of the student, and is an insult to students and teachers who do strive to learn.

And as for "Pro Am students memorize routines with their teachers and cannot deviate from it when they should be utilizing floorcraft" -- first of all it's not true for higher-level couples, and secondly I am wondering how is this different from what any and every lower-level amateur couple also does? Ever dance in an Amateur Novice event? There's a lot of rote routine performance and poor floorcraft out there that has absolutely nothing to do with Pro/Am.

The bottom line is that Pro/Am is merely another option for competitive dancing. Some of it is quite good, and some of it is rather bad, but this is also true of amateur dancing!! It's not the fact that a couple is Pro/Am or Amateur that makes them good or bad, it's their approach, their training, their natural abilities, the amount of time and money they have to spend, their levels of dedication and self-awareness, really there is much more to the equation and painting all Pro/Am with the same broad dismissive brush is just mean.

So many of the negative things said about Pro/Am can apply to anyone. I'm sure everyone has seen Amateur couples who take a lot of lessons but never seem to get any better. Or couples who spend more time fighting than working on their dancing, and so don't get any better. Or couples whose coaches don't push them hard enough and so they don't improve quickly. Or couples who just lack ability who can't break out of the Novice or Pre-Championship levels. Simply being in an amateur partnership does not miraculously make you a good dancer, and neither does dancing only with a Pro.

Laura, I appreciate your arguments on this subject. I can see how upsetting it must be to have something you are working on very hard be criticized. But, Obviously there are many couples out there that don't put in as much time into it as you do. Which makes me wonder what kind of a "professional" would allow themselves to go out on a competition floor and compromise their reputation with a partner with less ability and without enough training and preparation? It makes one think that the really good professionals simply avoid doing it altogether, or do so rarely, and allow all of the "B" ranked pros to dance with everyone else.
I don't know, I'm not an official on the subject. But as an amateur competitor this was how it looked to me. As a spectator at competitions with pro/am events I am embarrassed for most of the people competiting. Half of the time I would be hard pressed to pick out the professional from the Amateur. So I think the problems is with both sides, are the Amateur just desperate, or are the pros just greedy?

How much Amateur dancing have you watched? Have you seen amateur syllabus -- Bronze, Silver, Gold, and even Novice couples can look pretty green, too. Really, there's a lot of variety of dancing out there other than what you see in Amateur Pre-Championship and Championship-level dancing, and to compare syllabus-level Pro/Ams with Pre-Champ and Champ-level Amateurs is not fair.

As far as "really good professionals" simply avoiding Pro/Am altogether, that is completely untrue. In Standard, for instance, Victor Veyrasset, Igor Litvinov, Francesco Flumiani, Igor Suvarov, and Giampiero Giannico all dance with students. You can't tell me that all these guys, who are/were top-level Pro competitors and who coach Pro and Amateur couples, don't know how to teach or what good dancing is. Ditto for Ben Ermis, David Weise, and others like them in Smooth, or Andre Graveline in Latin, just to name a few.

It just kills me that when some people hear "Pro/Am" they immediately assume the worst. I used to do both Pro/Am and amateur at the same time, and it always angered me that when I stepped on the floor in my simple Novice Amateur event everyone thought I was a "real" dancer, but if I turned around the next day and did Pro/Am then I was suddenly a poseur and a faker who couldn't "really" dance and offended the sensibilities of the "real amateurs" around me. And all the difference was was about 12 hours and dancing with a different gentleman.

There are plenty of very good adult hobbyist dancers who do both Pro/Am and Amateur. Dara Campbell, who just came in 4th in the US National Over-35 Standard Championship at USA Dance Nationals with her amateur partner, also does Pro/Am with Igor Suvarov. Susan Nieswander, who I believe won the USA Dance National Amateur Over-35 Latin Championship with her amatuer partner, also does Pro/Am with Jim Maranto. Both Dara and Susan are among the top Pro/Am student dancers in the country, as well as being among the top amateurs in their age group.

Sure, you can look down at the beginners with teachers who don't really push them, but really that's not any different from looking down on social dancers or wedding couples or any other combination of people who aren't actively seeking and pushing themselves to learn all they can and develop all they can.

Here's another one...I actually once, many years ago, danced in an amateur competition with my now Pro/Am teacher. This was long before he turned pro. So then we were "good" because we were an amateur couple, but now -- even though both of us are vastly better dancers than we were back then -- we're suddenly crappy simply we're doing Pro/Am now? That just does not make sense, and this is why I get very angry when people start making blanket generalizations about how bad Pro/Am is and how "deluded" Pro/Am lady students are.

Word.

I don't argue with you that there are top level pros who do pro/am--there's just not enough of them.

My biggest beef is the thin line that separates an amateur and a professional. The way I understand it is one you dance and don't make money, the other you dance and do make money teaching. Making claims that you are a professional does not require a certain number of points, specific competitions won or anything. All you have to do is declare yourself a professional and pay your fees to join the professional ranks. I teach dance, therefore I'm a professional but would never consider myself a pro and dance in a pro am event with a student.

If pro/am-ers or the dance governing bodies are really concerned about the image that is projected about the event then there should be some quidelines on who can and can't be considered a professional.

Am I wrong?

I have been dancing amateur for 6 years and Pro Am for 2 years. If one really wants to compare the two types of dancing you need to have experienced both or it is very one sided.

My Pro Am lady partner is tall like me and I can dance smooth better with her than anybody. I felt it the first time we danced. It is how we move together. I chose her more as a dance partner than a Pro. We use other teachers to help us with technique and etc.

On the other hand I can dance better latin with my amateur partner.

Don't think it is all about Pro Am vs Amateur--its the individual you are dancing with--the dance magic, practice time and what quality of coaching you can get to go with your dancing.

Actually, you are wrong. Currently active top professionals are almost never available for pro-am in the ordinary sense.

The common names you have heard are those whose careers as competitive contenders are over, or realistically on hold for the moment. They may seem impressive as dancers, but compared to their competition they are not going anywhere. Those who are going somewhere are usually too busy training, travelling, and coaching their successors.

There is an exception to this, which is the handful of cases where a promising but struggling professional has entered into what is really just the old patron(ess)-artist relationship, usually with a single student.