But the very existence of this thread shows that many BR dancers feel that a very high price has to be paid for precision. So why shouldn't lower ranks also be allowed to revel in sensuality and musicality?
There are two answers to this.
************
First, precision itself is not the point. It never was!
Technical precision is merely the means by which we can fully realize our art. Without technical precision, we do not have complete awareness & control of our bodies, and therefore must rely to some extent on random chance to produce something beautiful. It is, of course, not
totally impossible to produce beauty without technique, but you can't count on it. This is why the lower levels of learners focus so obsessively on technique, and why it becomes less of a singular focus as skill improves.
************
Second, ballroom competition judging is inherently unfair. Judges get 90 seconds or less to evaluate 6-20 couples, which is already an absurd thing to ask of them. And that time constraint means that they only get to see one tiny slice of a couple's work. What if they happen to be watching at a bad moment?
They will have to assume that that bad moment is a fair representation of the couple's ability. They have no other option!
Because of that,
consistency is vitally important to a competitor, even if all they want from the contest is data and don't care about winning. They cannot afford to have jaggedly uneven quality compounding the unfairness of the judging structure. It is far more critical to eliminate your worst lows than to reach for your highest highs, in the low to middle levels where most of us work.
************
But this still doesn't fully answer the spirit of your question. Can't a lower-level competitor reject strategy entirely, and dance with their heart anyway?
Yes, they can, and some do (my wife used to be one such). However, it is rare. Because one common psychological feature of perennial competitors, and one driving force behind participation, is
dissatsifaction. They want their art to be better, and better, and better. Their vision is lofty, and their reality pretty much never measures up--no matter how far they get.
By contrast, folks who are happy to dance from their heart all the time are not motivated by dissatisfaction in this way. They either are principally concerned with
feeling instead of
aesthetic, for which technique is less critical, or else they are already satisfied-enough with how they look. And for either of those two mindsets, what would be the point of competing? It either rewards something you don't care about, or grinds down your self-satisfaction. A total waste of time!
**********
Postscript:
For my wife, the mismatch between what she felt and what she saw in her videos is why she moved away from an "all heart" mindset. Without viewing herself critically, she could have forever lived happily with her art as it existed in her mental image.
On one hand, that sounds terrible! She was happy, and competing ruined it!
But the full story is that
she is happier now, after putting in serious technical work so that her reality is closer to her mental image. Not only does she look better to her own eye, but when she lets go and dances from the heart, she can express her feelings in a deeper, more nuanced, more sophisticated way than she could even imagine before. So she has found the exchange acceptable, and is eager to continue developing her art...largely through refinement of her technical precision!
