Dancing teams at US universities

[elle]

What is the situation with dancing (latin & standard) at universities? Which ones have competitive, good-level dancers practicing and competing for their universities? Who teaches there?

[Joe]

Like many things, it varies. On the East Coast NY, DC, and Boston have good-sized concentrations of college programs. Not familiar with the West Coast.

[elle]

Are the dancesport team members viewed at the East Coast universities as full-scale athletes or just hobby-people? Is there status as strong as of tennis or football or other sport team members? Which universities have the strongest dance teams?

[NielsenE]

In almost all cases the teams are run as "Student Activities" ie not through the athletic office so its not an official Varsity/JV sport. A few teams have at times had "Club Sport" status which is a level between an intermural and JV. Normally its school politics and funding that control its designation.

For the NYC/Boston area that teams that tend to have the most success are: NYU, MIT, Harvard. However there have been, and continue to be, strong dancers from all of the 50ish teams in the region

[Laura]

Not familiar with the West Coast.
There is a large team at UC Berkeley, a medium-sized team at Stanford, a team so small that the only time it is visible is when it puts on a competition every year at San Jose State University, and a small but growing and very active team at California Polytechnic University (Cal Poly).

Don't know about Southern California, but I think there are teams at California Institute of Technology (Cal Tech), UC San Diego, and Claremont.

If you're looking for elite-level training, none of these are going to give you the kind of training you'd get from taking private lessons from a seasoned professional teacher, as they center on group classes and privates that are taught by upper-level team members. However, some teams do get discounts on private lessons from local pros. All of these teams are good ways to get into ballroom dancing and competing.

[star_gazer]

In Utah, both BYU (Brigham Young Univ) and Utah Valley State College have multi-level teams and ballroom dance majors. Although neither offer "elite" level training, a BYU graduate did recently make the quarter final of Rising Star Professional Ballroom at Blackpool.

[reb]

If you're looking for the best ballroom and latin training in the US as a university student - the BYU program is head and shoulders above the rest.

[elle]

Thank you for your answers.
Are there very important university teams competitions? Or the couples from there compete only on regular regional and other competitions?

[NielsenE]

MIT/Harvard/DCDI are some of the largest of the east coast collegiate competitions and have extremely competitive fields at syllabus and open levels. Typically more competitive than the amateur regionals, at all levels aside from championship where its hit or miss. UConn, Brown, Tufts, Yale, Cornell all host medium size events that are quite competitive as well. Then there's a large number of much smaller events that are great at the lower levels, or for upper levels wanting floor experience without much competition...

In New England/New York there's just about a competition every weekend from mid October to end of April with only a short vacation from mid December to mid January. Most of these will be moderately to highly competitive in Newcomer - Silver.

In addition to the amateur nationals that a lot of the collegiates attend, there's the "national collegiate championships" at OSB.

[Joe]

And the Prechamp levels are only competitive because it's the same couples. :)

[RIdancer82]

I know of one collegiate team in Mass. (outside of the Boston area) who is actually recognized as an athletic team/sport and so is funded by the Athletics department of their school.

[kimV6]

I know of one collegiate team in Mass. (outside of the Boston area) who is actually recognized as an athletic team/sport and so is funded by the Athletics department of their school.

huh, that's interesting. meanwhile, like probably everyone else, we're on the student org side. and when we tried to get a one-credit ballroom class going, we got shuffled back and forth between the athletic department and the theater/dance department, because neither wanted to take us, and neither wanted to let us use their space.

[DancingJools]

How flexible are college teams in allowing students from other area colleges/universities to participate in their group lessons or practice sessions?
I have a young relative who hopes to attend college in the US, and I am hoping to introduce him to ballroom dancing. I don't know if he will be going to a school that has an established team, but he will be in the NYC area, most likely, so I have my eye on the NYU or Columbia teams, but he could also go to the Boston area.
Suggestions?

[Chris Stratton]

If he ends up with a partner from the school's team, he can usually participate in most of the team's activities. The catch may be the introductory beginner team lessons are often held in tightly controlled campus space which he probably couldn't get into, it's not until 6 months to a year later that they move some of that to their coaches studio. But conceptually speaking if he - and the fact that it's "he" is probably an advantage at that point - shows up in the studio already at the point of being willing to take occasional private lessons, he can probably find a partner and particpate at the non-total-beginner level.

[sprifty]

If he ends up with a partner from the school's team, he can usually participate in most of the team's activities. The catch may be the introductory beginner team lessons are often held in tightly controlled campus space which he probably couldn't get into.

Yeah that was our problem at my university. We hold our practices and lessons in our university gym. Which means, unfortunately you have to have a school ID card to get in. Although we are more than happy to allow non-university students to participate with us at competitions and social dances. One of our couples a few years ago practiced by themselves at local dance studios because the lead was no longer a member of the university and then registered with us at competitions.

[IlyZislin]

welcome to DF, sprifty! didn't know you were here :)

[kimV6]

welcome to DF, sprifty! didn't know you were here :)

talked her into it by pointing out that DF is a great way to kill time during long hours at work... haha

[latingal]

Welcome to DF sprifty!

[IlyZislin]

talked her into it by pointing out that DF is a great way to kill time during long hours at work... haha

Is that what you do at all four of your jobs? :)

[kimV6]

Is that what you do at all four of your jobs? :)

haha, well it's down to three now. but when they give me access to a computer...

[skwiggy]

Welcome to DF, Sprifty!

[NUdancer]

Just thought I'd represent the Midwest since everyone else seems to have the coasts covered. I've done a little bit of dancing with people from teams while in Chicago, New York, and also in the San Francisco Bay Area.

My general impressions have been that the competitive areas correspond to the concentration of professional ballroom dancers who are teaching in that area. While the NYC area and SF area have quite a lot of very excellent instructor, the Midwest doesn't have quite as many. Everything is much more spread out there, and thus it's difficult for some of the teams to find highly-ranked professionals who are willing to travel to teach. The powerhouse of the Midwest is undoubtedly University of Michigan and Purdue University. They both organize well-attended competitions every year, and UMich also invites a pro couple as their showcase. There is a great sense of comraderie amongst all the schools there, and in many cases the competitive and social dance clubs are combined, such as at Northwestern. Other large universities in the area with a ballroom presence are the University of Illinois, Notre Dame, University of Iowa, Indiana University, and the Star of the North competition at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis.

[reb]

NUdancer,

Welcome to Dance Forums!

We need more of your type of midwest collegiate representation to stand up and be counted!

[latingal]

Add my welcome to reb's - hope to see you around the boards NUdancer!

[elle]

I wish foreign dancesport coaches could be invited even for a limited time by universities - to set up quality standards for dancing skills and for training.... due to the current situation with coaching at Midwest universities.....

[Laura]

I think it's just an issue of money and desire at this point, Elle. Many schools' dancesport programs are run by the participating students as clubs, and they just don't have the resources to do this. One school with the resources, Brighman Young University, does bring in top coaches.

[Chris Stratton]

I wish foreign dancesport coaches could be invited even for a limited time by universities - to set up quality standards for dancing skills and for training.... due to the current situation with coaching at Midwest universities.....

It does happen (organized by the students or a local teacher) but in the context of world class teachers' lives "a limited time" usually means a day or two. That's enough to do a lot for determined couples, but not enough to systematically alter a program.

(Don't know where exactly you are, but there's a studio in Dearborn, MI which has hosted some top overseas coaches... and they've often stopped in NY or Boston on the way to/from there)

It sounds more like you want to borrow someone who runs a foreign program for a semester but then what are their students going to do while they are gone?

[elle]

There are very well trained dancers who has been coaching to earn for their dancing. So if a university is interested in being among the first with really strong dance teams, I believe it is possible to fly the experienced coaches/active dancers to the university, to set up goals for the dance team progress and let them work on them. I think that putting an ad at dancesportinfo.net or at dance websites of several countries can be helpful to receive a good response.

[Chris Stratton]

What you are not understanding is that with maybe two exceptions, US university teams are not run by the universities, and the competitions they attend are not recognized by the athletic or dance departments. They don't have budgets for resident staff, or often even enough for practice space. Usually they can pay someone local for a few hours a week.

And if most of their advanced members sign up, plus offering the opportunity to other dancers in the area, they can schedule enough lessons to host a world class visitor for a day. But it's up to the locals to take the ideas from those infrequent consultations and turn them into a program.

[elle]

So the problem is in motivating the university to recognize dancesport as a sport basing on the fact that the International Olympic Committee recognized it as a SPORT several years ago already... When the competition among teams is so easy, it would be smart to invest in the dance training as a sport by the university. It requires vision and a lot of initiative....It's definitely up to those who are involved in dancing in the university format... and up to what they want to achieve in their dancing.

[delamusica]

Just thought I'd represent the Midwest since everyone else seems to have the coasts covered. I've done a little bit of dancing with people from teams while in Chicago, New York, and also in the San Francisco Bay Area.

My general impressions have been that the competitive areas correspond to the concentration of professional ballroom dancers who are teaching in that area. While the NYC area and SF area have quite a lot of very excellent instructor, the Midwest doesn't have quite as many. Everything is much more spread out there, and thus it's difficult for some of the teams to find highly-ranked professionals who are willing to travel to teach. The powerhouse of the Midwest is undoubtedly University of Michigan and Purdue University. They both organize well-attended competitions every year, and UMich also invites a pro couple as their showcase. There is a great sense of comraderie amongst all the schools there, and in many cases the competitive and social dance clubs are combined, such as at Northwestern. Other large universities in the area with a ballroom presence are the University of Illinois, Notre Dame, University of Iowa, Indiana University, and the Star of the North competition at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis.

There's also a team at Ohio State. I've met a few of their members at venues around Columbus and they've been fun to dance with, but I haven't been able to attend any of their events. (I go to Ohio U, which is 1.5 hrs away and has no dance team - the OSU team said that I was welcome to come if I could, though, so I guess that means that outsiders are welcome).

[Laura]

So the problem is in motivating the university to recognize dancesport as a sport basing on the fact that the International Olympic Committee recognized it as a SPORT several years ago already...
Yes, this is a large problem. For instance, a team at a university near me has such a problem with this that they can't even get permission to hold competitions on campus. The University, despite the continued efforts of the team, will not recognize dance competitions as anything other than a form of dance parties, and therefore will not allow the team to use campus facilities to host them! The University had problems in the past with certain music concerts getting out of hand and vandalism occurring, and so banned all dances from using campus facilities. The dancesport team has tried repeatedly to show the administration that a dance competition isn't a dance party or concert, but no one will listen to them or understand, and so they have to host their competitions at local dance studios. The team is quite large (over 150 members), but even with that financial resources are tight. They are fortunate in that they have access to excellent local pros (US finalists in Standard and Latin) to help coach them, but not being able to host competitions and social dances on campus does puts a damper on team finances.

[elle]

Laura, it's a good point and shows how administration acts against interests of the university students. What and who can influence the attitude of the university bureaucrats? Will an open discussion in the university press help? Is it a big university or a small one? How far is it from the Coasts?

[kimV6]

Laura, it's a good point and shows how administration acts against interests of the university students. What and who can influence the attitude of the university bureaucrats? Will an open discussion in the university press help? Is it a big university or a small one? How far is it from the Coasts?

elle, i think you have an optimistic attitude on this, which is definitely r efreshing, but misses some of the actuality of ballroom teams in college. we're lucky enough to have a room on campus that allows us to practice. but every semester we have to fight for even just the same amount of time (which at that is only like 8 hours a week, and odd times at night), because the university prioritizes their profitable fitness classes over us. moreover, we tried to get the team classified at the least as a club sport, so we could have access to the other hardwood floors on campus, but the people in charge have expressed the same "old-boy, football" attitude, which is "dance is a beautiful art, but it's not a sport." and i think this also misses the point of the attitude of a university to "off-the-beaten-path" sports. the way they dismiss ballroom from their priorities is the same way they would dismiss other olympic-recognized sports, like curling, or archery, or rhythmic gymnastics: they will celebrate and advertise us if there's a world champion in the university, but it would take a miracle for them to recognize us as more than a hobbyist student organization because we don't bring in any revenue for them like our basketball team does. and i think we're one of the luckier ballroom teams because at least the student association likes us.

[LindyKeya]

Laura, it's a good point and shows how administration acts against interests of the university students. What and who can influence the attitude of the university bureaucrats? Will an open discussion in the university press help? Is it a big university or a small one? How far is it from the Coasts?

Actually, don't hit up the university press. Get it in the real press instead. But first do what you can with just Administration. And anyone who tells you no? Go over their heads. Universities are big bureaucracies, and there is always someone higher to go to (generally with a board of regents at the top), but usually you don't have to go beyond a VP or the President.
Generally, if you go over enough peoples' heads, while laying out a logical, well-reasoned, and calm argument, you can get practically anything overturned. The trick is not to piss off regular office staff in the process, because you'll need them later.

We actually had to do this at my last university (I'm a grad student, so I've had several over the years), with our swing club. They wouldn't let us use anything, for anything, without massive fees and absurd rules. Eventually we got a VP involved, and things went smoothly after that. With the appropriate encouraging from above, and the fact that we hadn't annoyed the staff, they became VERY helpful after that, actually going beyond what they even had to do, because it turned out they liked us (and they liked having something interesting going on in the evenings, since some of them had to be there evenings anyway). (We kept trying to get the ballroom team there to work their way into the same solution, and for some reason they never tried.)

Administrators like to make problems go away as quickly as possible. Make yourselves a problem, and give them a simple, easy solution (or several options is even better).

For things to work, however, you have to be asking for a space that would be otherwise vacant at the time you want it. Under no circumstances will they oust a money-generating venture for you.

[Laura]

Laura, it's a good point and shows how administration acts against interests of the university students. What and who can influence the attitude of the university bureaucrats? Will an open discussion in the university press help? Is it a big university or a small one? How far is it from the Coasts?
It's a very large, very liberal university pretty much in sight of an ocean. The problem stemmed from hip-hop concerts/parties that were being held in the student union ballroom that were accompanied by drinking and vandalism. The school decided to ban all dance parties of any kind, because it wasn't possible under anti-discrimination policies to just ban hip-hop. The students have been trying to change this policy for a couple of years now, and the dancesport team has been trying to prove that they aren't a dance concert or party, but no one seems to get it.

[waltzgirl]

It's a very large, very liberal university pretty much in sight of an ocean. The problem stemmed from hip-hop concerts/parties that were being held in the student union ballroom that were accompanied by drinking and vandalism. The school decided to ban all dance parties of any kind, because it wasn't possible under anti-discrimination policies to just ban hip-hop. The students have been trying to change this policy for a couple of years now, and the dancesport team has been trying to prove that they aren't a dance concert or party, but no one seems to get it.


If they've had that experience, I can kinda see their point of view. It would be expensive to provide the kind of security needed to prevent or immeidately contain violence and vandalism. And if they allowed ballroom, how could they say no to a hip hop club that wanted to offer classes and hip-hop competitions?

[elle]

Don't you think that the approach is really stupid? I believe that in this situation of horrible impact by hip-hop etc culture, is to prove the point that dancing in the world and in US is a sport fully recognized by IOC, by contacting the organization, national dance organization, get letters of support etc. For bureaucrats written stuff is the most important thing to cover themselves from the risks. Hip-hop is NOT a sport.
The other step is to get publicity about the problem- maybe not only through a newspaper, university press, a bigger newspaper?, local TV etc, but contacting big-shots in the state government etc... May sound naive, but a big chance that something will push the situation towards a more intellectual approach than what exists there... But it will work only if the dancers really want to have a fair status for their passion (if it is there....).

[kimV6]

Don't you think that the approach is really stupid? I believe that in this situation of horrible impact by hip-hop etc culture, is to prove the point that dancing in the world and in US is a sport fully recognized by IOC, by contacting the organization, national dance organization, get letters of support etc. For bureaucrats written stuff is the most important thing to cover themselves from the risks. Hip-hop is NOT a sport.
The other step is to get publicity about the problem- maybe not only through a newspaper, university press, a bigger newspaper?, local TV etc, but contacting big-shots in the state government etc... May sound naive, but a big chance that something will push the situation towards a more intellectual approach than what exists there... But it will work only if the dancers really want to have a fair status for their passion (if it is there....).

i think that if we start throwing things around like "hip-hop is not a sport" then it opens up the door for people to throw out the baby with the bathwater in saying, "well then what exactly does ballroom have that hip-hop doesn't that makes it a sport?" in fact, i know people who would contend that hip-hop competitions involve just as much athleticism as ballroom comps. my school has one of the top hip-hop teams on the east coast, and i've got several friends on the team, and they are just as good at dancing, as ballroom dancers are at their craft.
again, i think you're missing the point. what press venue would really care? even established olympic sports have a hard time getting funding at the university level. i severely doubt that any elected official or press outlet with any power to impact change, unless they've competed before, would champion a cause like this. major sports = revenue, which is why universities go out of their way to support them (there's nothing particularly even wrong with that). small sports, especially ones like dancesport which are easily indistinguishable from social dancing to a public nourished on dancing with the stars, have a hard time getting footing.
i actually think ballroom is having its best period of time in the united states ever, what with the growth in public awareness. ten years ago, the general public probably wouldn't have known what a quickstep was. so really, patience, grasshopper.

[Chris Stratton]

Well, you see, the IOC hasn't recognized hip hop. And that makes all the difference in the world. not

[kimV6]

Well, you see, the IOC hasn't recognized hip hop. And that makes all the difference in the world. not

haha i got a kick out of that :tongue: