Trying to decide about my first Pro-Am comp...

[NielsenE]

After many years of dancing am-am, I've been taking a lot of pro-am lessons at a local studio. There's an upcoming studio regional competition. There's persistent, but minimal pressure from my teacher to compete. I love competition; and I'm very tempted, but the costs is, of course, something of a shock coming from the collegiate/amateur world.

I'ld like to hear from other people who started off in the amateur or collegaite dance world and shifted to(or added) Pro-Am. How did you get over the sticker-shock? Even a fairly minimal set of entries with none of the "extras" looks likely to be between 15-20 times what I'm used to paying for a competition.

[mamboqueen]

*bump*

Eric...did you make any decisions?

Past the sticker shock?

Anyone have any advice viz-a-viz the last paragraph?

[JohnLL]

Hi Eric, my first few comps were actually pro-am comps and then I went into the college scene later on. I agree that the "sticker shock" is probably one of the hardest things to overcome when deciding whether to do a pro-am event. My studio does the same thing and hosts their own regional competitions with other Arthur Murray schools. I will say that the pro-am comps I have done have always been a blast and I've never regretted spending the money.
If you want to talk more about pro-am comps we can catch up at the Holy Cross comp. I'll be the guy running around like crazy trying to help get stuff done. :D

John

[NielsenE]

I decided not to do this one (the day before Holy Cross) and am tentatively planning to do the next one in the summer, when I'm not in the middle of hosting registrations and scrutineers for about 10 competitions.

John, if either of us have some spare moments at the comp it'll be nice to talk, but know the past way event coordinators/scrutineer's schedules overlap I'd suspect it won't be easy :)

Thanks

[Kitty]

do you currently have an am partner?

[NielsenE]

I'm in the process of arranging tryouts with several. Each competition I've scrutineered has made me ever more excited about returning to am-am competitive dancing, preferably as a 19-dancer.

I'm also in the process of preparing for a student showcase at my studio and am overjoyed over that. I've wanted to do more performance based ballroom for a while both as a goal in itself and as a means towards improving floor presence/image. While I've done a few formation teams and/or demos for various events most weren't that different from competition routines/training.... this feels very different and so feels like its actually working towards my goals.

[Joe]

19? Crazy fool! ;)

[fascination]

i think 19 is a nice number

[SDsalsaguy]

i think 19 is a nice number
What are you, crazy? The number should be at least 21! (19 + salsa + wcs! ;))

[fascination]

well...will only consider salsa ans wcs under the proper instruction....shooting come hither look

[Merrylegs]

Good luck with your search. Maybe we should post some tips on the interview/try out process.

I'll start:

Return phone calls and emails to all the people who respond to your ads. Afterall, they took the time to respond to your ad.


I'm in the process of arranging tryouts with several. Each competition I've scrutineered has made me ever more excited about returning to am-am competitive dancing, preferably as a 19-dancer.

[Laura]

That's a good one. Once I responded to about eight ads one night, and only two people ever wrote back -- one to say that he had forgotten his ad was still up.

Which brings me to another point: when you find a partner, deactivate your ad!