Donating Dancesport Wear to College Teams

dancerman said:
This is Brian Bercury of Take the Lead Dance Wear, Waltham Massachusetts.
I want to make a donation; some brand new shoes. I have some shoes I have been selling them down but I would rather have a team enjoy them. Reading that shoes are worn and broken just bothered me. I have 1 or 2 pair of closed toe and a small assortment of open toe. Brand is Stephanie. Someone can private message me and we can talk.
I would prefer a New England team and that it be one that REALLY needs them.
If your team is interested send me a private message including, team information, leaders of officers, membership (numbers) and a few details about the team. I would also appreciate if your team would find a like our page on facebook but that is not a condition
We'll call it a class project. No joke. This is several hundred dollars worth of new good quality stuff.
You may see our ad at the top of the page today. We just want to give back as a thank you.
No dancer should be seen without shoes or clothes. The shoes, its just not right. The clothes, downright illegal. :)
Click to expand...
We also may have a few pieces of brand new and used clothing. Just taking up valuable hangers.....
 
Okay, to all you college team people who signed up to be on the donations list. this is a great opportunity. If Brian of Take the Lead Dancewear is willing to donate some BRAND NEW (and used) stuff, I'd be jumping at the chance!!

Brian - thank you so much for offering up items to our college team members in need!!! Bless you!
 
thanks. I just got a very nice letter from the U Mass Amherst team and, although I have not read it in its entirety, I am going to put some things together after the weekend. I have been carrying some inventory in the hopes of selling it so why not give it to people who can actually appreciate it. I will update what we have done.
I hope this helps them and perhaps will spur others to do the same.
There is an expression: To keep what you have, you must give some of what you have to someone who needs it.
 
We are so thankful. I am seriously so excited to get some men's wear since our supplies of Men's wear is seriously limited. Our team has never actually owned a pair of dance pants before! :) Our leaders will be so delighted that they're getting some goodies too this time. Thank you again Brian!
 
Yes, if you could narrow down what your greatest needs are, that would be great. I'd like to send something, but am not sure what is most needed. Smooth/Standard? Latin/Rhythm? Large/Small? Unfortunately I can only offer female-oriented stuff. You pretty much summed it up that you need neat hair and visible lips and eyes. I haven't gone the fake-lash route yet but get great effect with lots of mascara and eyeliner. Tanner/bronzer is more important at the higher syllabus levels and also very dependent on how a particular color looks on a particular dancer. As in, pale lady wearing white gown -- might really want to consider tanning. Keep those costumes looking nice too. No wrinkles, no bra straps showing, no rips, no massive stone loss.

Again, WOW on needing to have a waiting list. Perhaps your team will be a force to be reckoned with in the near future.
 
Okay, so it depends on what we're looking at.
If you're looking at sending costumes S/S is more needed than L/R.
If you're looking to send shoes though L/R shoes that aren't destroyed are more needed.
All around larger shoe sizes are needed and smaller costume sizes-- we have a particular shortage of size 10 shoes despite the fact we have a good number of size 10 feet.
But honestly that's the kind of just the easiest classification I could use-- just about anything that's sent will be used and we will be extremely thankful for it.

Our Newcomer group from last semester-- since we started this mentoring program-- is already a force to be reckoned with. We always prep our Newcomers for competition by saying that they shouldn't expect to get callbacks because it's really hard to get noticed. In their first competition last semester, Brown, every single one of our Newcomers got at least 2 callbacks, I think all of them made it to at least one Quarterfinal, and about half to at least one semifinal (those of us who were upper level team members were all shocked-- we had no idea that they would be that successful). We only had one couple that placed, but they placed in 4 events. Their second competition, Tufts, we had at least one Newcomer couple place in every single event, one couple got 1st in every Rhythm event, and we had 3 of the top 5 in International Rumba. So far this semester they've all started going to comps as Bronze, of course, and of the 5 couples who have competed at Bronze so far this semester 3 have placed in their first Bronze competition-- one couple placed 4 times in their first comp, the second placed twice and the third once. None of them placed particularly high, but still I think that's pretty impressive considering they've only been doing Bronze for like a month and a half now. I never placed in Bronze, and my partner at the time and I worked really hard at Bronze-- but we just never had the foundation that these Newbies got from their mentors. Also I think it helps them that they've been succeeding since the beginning, people from their group goes into competitions believing that they have the skills to place-- whereas people from previous semesters go in thinking that it's going to be a little bit lucky to place. I think that kind of confidence that they've got going for them is something that is invaluable. We've never had a group like this and we're all super enthusiastic about the direction the team is headed in (and super jealous that the team wasn't like this when we joined!), but it does cause some problems with funding, costumes and such, any area in which we have limited resources.

Wow, before I got off track talking about how proud we are of our Newcomers I also meant to mention that on most of our dresses we do have a problem with pretty massive stone loss-- I think we have a bag of extra rhinestones somewhere, do you have any recommendations on how exactly to put the stones back on/what glue to use/etc.?
 
To clarify, size 10 women's latin sandals? Let me check my shoes and my Smooth/Standard dresses. That's great that your team is coming along so well.

As for re-stoning dresses, it depends on what was left behind. Sometimes you can just glue back any missing stones, but sometimes in order to get them to stick well, you really should remove the residue. This can be done by carefully picking it off with fingernails or tweezers, or soaking in acetone to loosen it, or melting it off with an iron or hotfix wand. Always test the acetone/heat first to make sure it doesn't do damage to the fabric. I'm partial to Gem-Tac rhinestone glue, but others swear by E-6000.
 
Probably best is Size 10 any shoes-- S/S or L/R-- or lacking that L/R in good condition of any size. And thank you so much, we really appreciate it, by the way.

It really is great-- we're so proud of their group. The rest of us Upper-Levels really wish we were that consistently competitive at competitions.

Okay, I will look into getting some Gem-Tac-- this is going to be a big project but I think it will be worth it to get our dresses looking like they're in tip top shape again. :) Thank you so much for your advice.
 
Actually I heard about that-- they really enjoyed talking with you. Thank you so much, once again. So as far as getting the pieces, I was thinking one of my teammates could run out to your store at some point during our Spring Break-- that would be the week after next-- would that be good? And she can bring the items that we need appraised and take care of that at the same time.
 
I am very proud to say that Take the Lead Dance Wear, in our tradition of helping assure that everyone who wants to dance gets to dance, donated over $1,000 worth of new dance shoes, dance clothing, plus used clothing and shoes to one of our local college teams. We have also posted that anyone who donates useable dance shoes and clothes through our Waltham store will receive a raffle ticket. I cannot say what we will raffle off yet because it will depend on the response to our offer but it will be fun.
Thank you to Dance Forums for starting this thread. I have a very good feeling because of the smiles we were able to put on newbies faces. Thanks and see you at the Harvard Invitational this weekend. Bring your donations if you want and I will bring my raffle tickets.
:cool:
 
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