"Ideal" ballroom training center...

NielsenE

NielsenE

Active Member
Budding this off from the "Junior Competitive dancesport" thread since its not tied to juniors only.

I've often dreamed about building a ballroom training center should I ever win the lottery (of course that would require me to play the lottery first, but....)

So my vision of the "Ideal" training center

1 Large ballroom, suitable for use for a moderate size competition, probably with an attached stage area & balcony seating

Several (4-6) "regular sized" studio spaces, roughly minimum competition floor sized

Several (4-6) smaller "study" rooms (probably more like 30'x30', with projector systems for reviewing comp video and/or instructional video, or private exam settings

On-site gym, yoga, pilates, sports medicine studios/instructors, locker rooms, showers, sauna -- probabbly also including on-site retail, tanning?, etc

On-site foodcourt and 1 nicer restaurant (envisioned at least 1 night per week some sort of dinner dance)

Been typically viewing it in my drawings as a two floor setup, with the main ballroom/studio spaces on the first floor, and the gym/lockers/yoga/pilates/sports medicine in the basement. With teh food court and resturant flanking an outdoor dance space (with the indoor stage opening either to the outdoor space on one side and to the main ballroom on the other side.

Was definitely envisioning a large enough space to run a competition or a dance camp in the facility, which partially explains the scale I was thinking.


Would think that one of the studio spaces should be used as a "regular" studio -- more low stress/ introductory lessons, getting people started. While the rest of the venue is for the more series competitors. With dedicated spaces/times for rounds of each style. As well as periods of reserveable practice space.

Feel free to suggest additions/ substractions of the physical plant. Or suggestions for further fine tuning the use of space/"attitude"

Part of the problem I see with the somewhat overly large vision is that it would be hard to "fill" with the number of people to generate the energy level needed to inspire/motivate the trainees. (Not to mention the cost, but... for now ignore cost :) )
 
Make sure you include a private room for all the world-class coaches that will be coming in. I assume you're proposing this to be in our neck of the woods. If so, I'm on board. :) I'll help paint!
 
Do you restrict participation/membership to students who have competition as the primary purpose for their dance training? Even at the beginning stages?
 
If you want to get into the practical side, I think it would be necessary to look at the moderately effective "synthetic" situations that exist and understand how they fit together to create something somewhat practical. For example, greater NYC is a bit of a training "facility", but it only works because there are multiple locations each providing part of the puzzle. Ballroom on fifth had a key central role, but a lot of the youth preperation was going on out in Brooklyn, a lot of the economic input was from work at a handful of social studios, a few other locations provided overflow and privacy opportunties, and there are some parallel efforts going on out in NJ.

Bringing it all under one roof would be tempting, going further than what exists could support would be great - but it's probably necessary to first understand the way in which the pragmatic efforts that do exist work.
 
Angelo said:
Do you restrict participation/membership to students who have competition as the primary purpose for their dance training? Even at the beginning stages?
Click to expand...

Only if you have some magical source of funding in mind, other than the social and wedding aspects of the dance business.
 
That's a delicate line, IMO. I've indicated that I think at least one space should be reserved for standard studio functions -- beginning dancers, wedding couples, etc. These people have an energy/enthusiasm, that I think shouldn't be excluded. But that they'll probably want to be slightly sheltered from the others initially.

Ideally I'd want in addition to the rounds in some spaces to also have supervised practices going on in other spaces -- this is where I'd envision the beginners starting to mix with the more advanced/competition focused individuals as they leave the "Studio" and start to enter the "Center". Perhaps even schedule some 'beginning rounds" as well, once a week to help ease them into the full offerings, etc

Since at this point, I'm not worried about space, I'm worried about keeping opportunities open for dedicated people of all ability and experience level
 
Actually, transit seems like a serious problem even here in greater NYC - can't afford to put it in Manhattan, if you put it out in Brooklyn or Flushing it's inaccessable to the suburband NJ part of the community. But if you put it out in NJ the Brooklyn based dancers can't get there.

I *live in NJ* but I still think of most NJ studios as being impractically far out in the boonies.

One of the realities that needs to be taken into account is that a lot of core functions like rounds will probably still happen late at night. Even if you have two full floors, one for slow moving and one for fast, too many of your competitors will need to spend the prime evening hours teaching their own students, meaning they will be doing their own practice late at night and need a way to get home then. And many don't have cars, being either NYers or too young to drive, or both.
 
Actually, given that NY and Boston both have rivers as transit obstacles, I keep coming back to the idea of a floating facility. And then I start wondering about the practicality of moving it up and down the east coast to hold competitions in different cities...

(Is your studio carpooling to x? No. we're taking the studio... literally)
 
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