There is no reason for us to continue our endless dispute about the quaity - or lack thereof- of pro/am competition as a means of development by stepping on other folks' threads. Let them enjoy their threads without having to scroll past page after page of our disagreement.

You have made the claim that some amateurs have made great improvements as amateur competitors through the use of pro/am competition.

Very well. Please provide us with some examples, which should name the competitors, the pros, and the competitions whose results validate this "improvement."

We already have testimony on this board from others about the improvements they have enjoyed after finding an amateur partner.

You may well point to kaiara's response in the "Amateur Complaints" thread. Please pay careful attention to what she actually says.


In other words, she is introduced to the skills by a pro (which she should be) but actally masters those skills with her amateur partner. This scenario is really no different from the training path which I recommend.

So, please, give us those examples. They should, of course, be verifiable.

And while you're at it, why don't you tell us whether or not you have or have had an amateur partner? On all of the dance message boards which I've read, I've never seen any posters who are unwilling to share the details of their experiences except you. After all, those details help other readers understand the information that the posters may give.

Also, if any other amateur competitors reading this thread have greatly improved their amateur competition performances through pro/am competition then I hope that they will tell us their story.

Looking forward to those examples.

And BTW, your final responses in that other thread are bullsh*t. I expect that we will revisit them in this thread.

"Thinking skills"? Another one of your meaningless ad hoc inventions.



jj

PS My responses may be delayed a bit ( we're competing this week) but I will get back. This thread may never end.

"You have made the claim that some amateurs have made great improvements as amateur competitors through the use of pro/am competition.

Very well. Please provide us with some examples"

Identifying them by reviewing the backgrounds of likely championship finalists was assigned as homework to you.

Like any good homework exercise, the point is not just the targeted information, but the other information you will learn while researching it.

"anymouse, I agree very much with the balance of your post. I am finding that time spent with a good professional brings me up in skills; but that dancing with my own partner develops those skills so that I can hold on to them even with different partners."

Yes, kiara is right about that in her situation. But, under circumstances that are really right for it, the development and application can also be done during a year or two of dancing with a professional before returning to the amateur world. That doesn't mean that it will or usually will (statistically it fails) but it can and has worked out quite well.

Two of the common reasons that people do not fully develop their skills when dancing with a pro are that they can't afford enough time, and they aren't physically capable of matching what the pro would do when fully switched on. To make the pro/am leapfrog thing really work as a context for exercising skills in addition to learning them, the student needs to have the funds to do it very heavily, and to be in the same kind of physical condition as a championship amateur or rising star professional. Stereotypically, the physical part is there early in life but often fades by the time sufficient funds become available. And of course attitude to the whole thing is more important than either.

""Thinking skills"? Another one of your meaningless ad hoc inventions."

Suggest you spend some time talking to your fellow dancers, especially the ladies. There are skills that are best attacked from an intellectual perspective and others that are best attacked from a feeling perspective, though there will be person-to-person and even time-to-time variations in which is which.

In other words, you cannot provide any examples. Lovely.

In formal debating, what you just tried to do is known as shifting the burden of proof. Doing so is a legitimate tactic only when the speaker has first articulated a compelling reason for the shift. You introduced the argument; the burden of proof remains with you.

Before you presume to take the role of teacher, you need to know more about the subject than the person whom you regard as a student.

The physical capabilities of the student are irrelevant to this discussion. A fit and energetic young woman will still develop her dancing skills more thoroughly by learning with an amateur partner than by competing in pro/am.

I did discuss the term "thinking skills" with a couple of professionals (my own and a colleague of his) after our session on Sunday. After a brief period of laughter, they indicated that the term refers to teaching skills and not to practical dancing skills.

I see that you have chosen to continue demonstrating your disrespect for the other posters on this board by refusing to share meaningful details about your background as all of them have done - willingly so.

Henceforth, the issue of examples of the use of pro/am to improve amateur skills is closed. That's one point that you have lost. We are not going to indulge the use of the spread technique in this thread.

Answer the question.



jj

"Identifying them by reviewing the backgrounds of likely championship finalists was assigned as homework to you.

In other words, you cannot provide any examples. Lovely."

No, I can - as anyone familiar with the biographies of top competitors well knows - but I choose not to, as taking the initiative to research the information yourself will be of more benefit to you than being told it. It will not be hard to find - you need only look at the results of the premier pro/am competition over the last three years, and at major amateur competitions already held this year.

"The physical capabilities of the student are irrelevant to this discussion. A fit and energetic young woman will still develop her dancing skills more thoroughly by learning with an amateur partner than by competing in pro/am."

With a good pro focused on the student's development this is false. What is true is that dancing skills are not necessarily the most important part of being a successful dancer, and the comparative luxury of dancing with an outstanding pro can fail to develop (or even harm) the interpersonal skills needed to function in an amateur partnership.

The specific importance of the student's physical skills is that if she is unable to physically keep up with the pro if he were in effect to dance for himself, she will not get the full potential benefit of dancing with him. In the case where the student is a viable candidate for consideration as a potential professional partner of the pro - then she starts to. The primary reason you don't see more of that is that the youth to attempt this and the funds to enable it rarely co-occur, at least not in the presence of the attitude necesssary to make it happen.

"I did discuss the term "thinking skills" with a couple of professionals (my own and a colleague of his) after our session on Sunday. After a brief period of laughter, they indicated that the term refers to teaching skills and not to practical dancing skills."

You obviously presented the idea wrong. Dance as practiced, studied, and taught in the ballroom world is a combination of two things - intellectual knowledge, and physical feeling knowledge. No one with a shred of clue will deny that.

I notice that you cannot name any specific competitions.

Gee, I guess that "serious" dancing students such as yourself just know these things.

As I pointed out previously, you've already lost that round. You failed to provide the examples so stop whining.


Well, we cannot prevail in our original line of argument so we're going to distract and obfuscate. So now "interpersonal skills" are as important or more so than dancing skills, huh?

The only interpersonal "skill" needed to maintain a successful partnership is the ability to be completely honest with your partner.

So now you've abandoned your argument that pro/am competition can improve an amateurs dancing skills. You lose again.

I tell you what I'll do. I'll cut your own words about "thinking skills" and print them for these coaches to read.

I'll give you credit for consistency: you always refuse to deal in specifics.

Again, you ignore the question about your partnership status. It's obvious to me that you do so because you fear that sharing the truth about your situation will undermine the position of respect which you seem to think that you hold on this site.

And by the way, memorizing patterns and movements is not intellectual. Were it so then students could teach themselves to dance through tha application of rational principles.



jj

"I notice that you cannot name any specific competitions.:"

Of course I can - but the point is for you to discover the information for yourself.

"So now "interpersonal skills" are as important or more so than dancing skills, huh?"

You treat this as if it were a new argument, but you ignore that I've pointed that out at least once before during this discussion.

"So now you've abandoned your argument that pro/am competition can improve an amateurs dancing skills. You lose again."

The only thing that has been abandoned is your homework assignment to do some trivial research, which if completed would have educated you about the reality of what pro/am can accomplish in a case well suited to it.

"The only interpersonal "skill" needed to maintain a successful partnership is being completely honest with your partner."

Often it's best to keep your frustration to yourself, or at least dump it on someone other than your partner. Managing frustration is actually one of the most important skills to long term progress.

"And by the way, memorizing patterns and movements is not intellectual. Were it so then students could teach themselves to dance through tha application of rational principles."

Patterns and movements can indeed be learned by such means once the foundation experience to approach them is present, but patterns and movements are only a minor aspect of "dancing". As I've been saying all along, there is specific factual knowledge that is important, and then there is also a lot of "feeling" knowledge that is equally important.

One doesn't need to work very hard to do the research. The owner of this very website was a pro-am.

I think people are probably tiring of this conversation. Just give some examples or let's close the topic.

J

My example is a young lady who twice distinguished herself at the premier pro/am competition, then returned to the amateur world where she and her partner have placed well in one of the few important amateur competitions to be held so far this year, and have a good shot at the nationals final.

Those who are actually curious about what is going on in dance competition will be able to identify her quite quickly.

It would be also interesting to discover the backgrounds of other potential amateur finalists - which are former youth competitiors, which started dancing in college or potentially later, which were once professionals, etc. These things are well known within the competition community, but their lessons about how various paths work out is not so widely known outside of it.

I stress the idea of doing the research oneself both because of the incidental knowledge to be gained along the way, and also because I think it's in a way impolite to go plastering individual's names all over hotly debated threads.

Ah, c'mon. I just got popcorn! They were gonna take off their shirts next!

Edit: This got eaten when I mis-bracketed something:

No- really, it's a little stagnatey, but I fully understand the need to be "right, dammit!", so if this is a once-and-for-all, I say let 'em do it. Although, I'd bet money they wouldn't take it to a private email conversation, duke it out, and then issue a press release with the results. Dancing IS fundamentally exhibitionistic/voyeuristic, afterall, IMO.

LMAO !!!!!!!