Dancesport doesn't work as a sport

[redhead]

Right. I'm all for "do your own thing as long as you don't get on others' way"

 

[tacad]

everyone may perform any activity for a different set of reasons than the next person. i suspect that a lot of issues are a result of an individual and/or group of individuals presuming that everyone has the same motives & goals - or worse, that they somehow should have the same motive & goals.

Agreed.

 

[tsb]

i do know of one person active in one of the USABDA chapters in S. CA who has gone as far as to state in a mass email that dancesport is the future of ballroom dance. I am uncomfortable with the idea that someone with such a bias would expect eveyone in that chapter to feel the same way & that is the primary reason I refrained from joining.

 

[pygmalion]

Wow.

 

[tsb]

the person in question was approached by other chapter members & the rhetoric has been toned down, but i know the agenda is there, so certain (specific & scarcely to be anticipated) meteorological conditions will have to take place in the infernal regions before i reconsider joining that particular chapter.

 

[Chris Stratton]

I won't endorse the person who wrote that dancesport was the future (because I think dancesport is the wrong approach even to competition) but a lot of the blame lies with the realities of life in a volunteer organization. Competitors either pretty much ignore their chapter, or get involved and dominate it. On a larger scale, USA Dance is a uniformist organization subservient to an even more uniformist IDSF, so rather than different camps pursuing diverse goals to increase the range of options, they have to fight each other for control of the one official course of action. (There's room for a little social vs. competition variety, but only only for one flavor of comeptition within that)