Where is the best city for ballroom dance?First, let me say that we are 32 years old and dancing for fun. Though we compete our objective is not to find a studio to take lessons. Our objective is to find other, similar dancers with whom we can improve. We are visiting some relatives in Tampa in a few weekends and are considering moving to Tampa, San Diego, Atlanta, SF, etc. Specifically, what city has dances for the general public attended by >5 active ballroom dance couples in adult A (<35)?

We live in Columbia, SC and can go to a club where Salsa is danced at a high level. We can also go to shag clubs and country dance clubs. The local USABDA meets twice monthly, has excellent facilities, but has few competitive dancers. The local studios have few to no competing dancers. Anyone know of a city we should investigate?

We have looked at the web sites for several USABDA groups but they are not impressive. Also, we looked at the regional comp.s in San Jose and Seattle and from the list of dances (not even each required dance in bronze latin for instance) concluded that ballroom dance may be weaker on the west coast than here. For now, our thoughts are #1 location is probably in the mid-west and #2 maybe the Miami area. Anyone have any input on this?

Thanks!
Tim

Looking at the regional competition lists is misleading. In most USABDA competitions they do not offer all five dances at the lowest syllabus levels. The idea is that beginners (bronze dancers) can spend their time focussing on a couple of dances so they can get started rather than facing the hurdle of having all 5 "competition ready" for their first time out.

In terms of numbers of active amateur competitors, the North East (Boston/New York/New Jersey) is the biggest. The Manhattan Amateur Classic is a MASSIVE amateur competition held every January. I can't speak for the Mid-West, but, but I have first hand reports that the amateur scene in Miami for competitive ballroom dancing is miniscule. There's a lot of competitions, but those are mostly for Pro/Am competitors.

California has a decent amateur scene, but not as big as the New York City area. Still, there are so many amateur competitions in the Bay Area alone that you could go to one a month and never have to go far enough away to require spending the night in a hotel. Los Angeles and Las Vegas are short and cheap plane rides away, which nearly doubles the number of competitions available yearly.

Of the top amateurs in International Standard right now, most are from New York City, with the rest being from California. There's a few other high-ranking couples from other places, but it really is mostly an East Coast/West Coast kind of thing.

In Latin it's also almost an East Coast/West Coast kind of thing, with some great competitors from Texas, too.

And of course there's the slew of good people based at BYU in Utah.

You would be in the yellow piece of pie called "Other", of course

I failed to mention that the chart does only represent _competing_ amateurs registered with one of the two national ballroom organizations in the US. I'm sure social scenes can and do follow a different pattern.

Thanks for the info. This helps guide our research. I sort of feel obliged to point out that USABDA amatuer progression is per dance so not offering all 5 dances in Latin would mean the dancer cannot progress in the dances that are not offered; so, I now realize that syllabus should be skipped as far as competition is concerned and we were incorrect in focusing on it since we started 2.5 years ago. I now realize that one should do sylabus for learning and just go right to novice open competitions.
Hope to make it to the Manhatten Amatuer Classic you mentioned.

Happy dancing,
TimJowers

Where are the New Orleans dancers?!?! Strictly competition, of course?!

I know I'm not the only person in New Orleans who wants to compete in Ballroom?!?!

I don't understand how you came to the conclusion that a dancer "can't progress" because single dance events are not always offered in all dances. Even if you start in Novice you don't get all the dances: generally, Novice is a three-dance event, Pre-Championship is 4-dance, and Championship is all 5 dances.

The point system wasn't set up to prevent people from moving forward before they were ready -- there are no minimums that you have to earn before you are "allowed" to move on. Rather, the point system is set up to force people who have achieved success to get up out of the lower levels. So, you can dance Gold Syllabus even if you've never eared points in Bronze in Silver, or if you've only earned points in a few dances. (Ditto for the out-of-syllabus levels.)

If you've been studying syllabus for the past 2.5 years it is most certainly not a waste of time. However, it would be a more effective use of your time to see what dances are usually offered on your syllabus level and concentrate on those. For example, if none of the comps you're going to be in offer Paso Doble at the Silver level, then focus your energies on the other dances and leave off the Paso until later. That's the whole point of them not making you do all the dances at each level: to give developing dancers a "smaller bite" to chew on while they prepare and progress.

Amateur Breakdowns as of 07/01/2003

Things to consider: This is only data from one of two of the major ballroom dance organizations for the US, and as you already know, California is a big state, and this chart does not give you the areas of concentration for CA, but, at a glace, they are Bay Area, LA Area, and San Diego area (sorry I couldn't get more specific, but all I have is a mailing list).

"Do or do not, there is no try," Yoda, Episode V