NDCA registration to be required for Pro/Am students

R

RiseNFall

Forum Master
My teacher pointed this out to me today. Not sure how I missed it. ;) The $25 annual fee is not much, but the question is what does it buy us? Representation? (Joking--pretty sure that is not their intent. They say it is so that they can track results and post standings.)

Here is the announcement of it:
For Immediate Release

Dear Valued Licensees,

At the July 2018 semi-annual meeting of the National Dance Council of America in Dallas it was recommended and approved that the NDCA will require all competitors in NDCA sanctioned events to be licensed. Licenses will be issued in three categories as follows:
1. Professional Competitor's License
2. Amateur Competitor's License
3. Pro-Am Competitor's License

The new Pro-Am Competitors License may be obtained in one of three ways:
a. Dancers may register directly with the NDCA
b. Dancers may be registered by their teacher who would submit the dancers name with the teacher's address, etc as the contact point.
c. Dancers may be registered by their studio which would submit the dancers name and the studio address, etc as the contact point.

The new Pro-Am License will be $25 per year for all age categories: adult, pre-teen, junior, and youth Pro-Am competitors.

With the worldwide spread of Pro-Amateur competition, this new license will begin the development of the first 'Official United States of America Ranking' for NDCA licensed competitors.

Registration opens in October of 2018 for the 2019 calendar year. We encourage all teachers to inform their students of this license and urge them to register in order to make this transition as smooth as possible when entering any NDCA sanctioned event in 2019.

The NDCA does not, and will not, share any personal information of licensees with any outside entities.

Sincerely,

The National Dance Council of America
 
Ability to compete and ranking is all we are getting for our $25? Aren't there a ton of different pro-am dance circuits already available if you want to be ranked? I'm a bit skeptical of this. and also more info would be helpful on where they are going to post this ranking, and what will people do with it?
 
Larinda McRaven said:
And as a note: As one of the two PDF representatives at the meeting, and we choose to abstain our vote on this until we felt like there was time to talk to our constituents about such a wide sweeping measure.
Click to expand...

thanks for the info! I guess I wasn't part of the people asking for rankings - i think i skipped over those threads, sorry, **cringe**. The price is pretty cheap - i guess htat wasn't my complaint, it was more I was skeptical about the whole idea. I will hold further response til i'm more informed :)

Aside: those dang fishnets. I will wear mine over and over and over so i don't have to pay again for those uncomfortable things.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Larinda McRaven said:
What other competitive sport can you think of where you aren't required to register as a competitor. In reality it is only $25, that is less than two group classes...
Click to expand...

Three group classes around these parts, but the point stands. :)

I'm good with this change, I'm generally a fan of organized information tracking. Two questions:

1. Will the all the rankings (etc) be public information, or at least available to registered competitors?

2. Just double-checking that this is starting for the 2019 calendar year, correct? i.e. it is not necessary to be registered prior to any upcoming 2018 comps (I'm not even asking for a friend, I'm asking for myself here).
 
@Larinda McRaven any idea how they are going to handle us foreigners (many of whom come south not infrequently)? Currently our pros simply need to be registered with their domestic organizations. Is that going to change?
 
Larinda McRaven said:
You asked for it... a tracking system.
Click to expand...

Oh, this is going to be difficult!! At the moment, I sometimes see competitions not even enforcing their own stated rules on limits of what can be entered. Pretty much anything they do is going to make some people unhappy. I do not envy the people trying to figure out what is fair and reasonably meets the needs of organizers and both parts of the pro/am competitors.

I agree that the $25 is inexpensive, I just didn't really understand why they were doing it.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
So registering with the NDCA won't prevent sandbagging. It will take tracking of placements, and owners of competitions actually telling Pro/Am competitors that they can't dance at a lower level. More than happy to pay $25 for this if they really enforce it. BUT, many comps already have this rule in place but they don't enforce it. Why turn away the extra entries (money)? There is no stated goal, reason, or purpose for the registration coming directly from NDCA.

I realize that the ballroom world is completely different that any other business out there, still it would be nice to say why they want $25 from everyone.
 
Looking at the NDCA rulebook, Section X.B. on Proficiency Classifications, it states that proficiency points are added based on placements in the final but only if there was a quarter final. If only mentions “Syllabus”, “Novice” and “Pre-Championship” proficiency classifications for accumulation of points. It doesn't mention a proficiency point system based on medal-level sub-classifications.

So if someone never dances in an event that has a quarter-final they will never accumulate proficiency points. So someone who dances at a championship quality level could dance pre-bronze forever if willing to limit to the syllabus figures. Probably would not happen to this extreme, but people would to continue to dance and win at lower levels past the point where they should have moved up. Different people will have different standards on what that point is, and this may be further distorted for those inclined to collect ribbons. OTOH, someone who happened to win 3 bronze syllabus events that had quarter-finals would be pushed to novice.

My take on this is that significant improvement to the rulebook would be necessary before there would be a reduction in complaints about sandbagging, even if enforced consistently.
 
Apparently, this is not a new thing. Here is a long discussion from 7 years ago:
https://www.dance-forums.com/threads/ndca-requires-pro-am-students-to-register.38476/
Yet, there I still don't find logical explanation to the $25 fee requirement. (Reading how passionately Larinda has been defending this proposal, makes me think it was her idea.:p)

The argument that pro-am students should not get for free something everyone else is paying for, sounds lame. As if pro-am students already were not a major source of revenue for competition organizers AND for the whole industry. The entry fees organizers collect from just one pro-am student pretty much cover their annual sanction fee.

To start tracking points? They can make registration mandatory, instead of voluntary, without any fee.
By the way, where can we see the current ranking for amateurs and professionals who have been paying registration fees all the time? And how are they going to account for the thousands of uncontested pro-am heats in this ranking?

If NDCA needs more registration fees revenue, why not get rid of this "Pro-Am student" category entirely and require every dancer to be registered as either Amateur or Professional? Twice the amount of fee from pro-ams! I personally would rather register as amateur for $50 than "pro-am student" for $25. This term feels a little demeaning (especially, with the clause about teacher or studio submitting registration in behalf of the student). Does dancing in a competition with professional partner makes me less of an amateur than dancing with my level amateur partner?

And if some professionals voting on NDCA proposals feel like they are paying too much in registration fees, how about creating a category "Pro-Am teacher" and charging only the $25 for those who are not competing professionally? :D
 
snapdancer said:
Looking at the NDCA rulebook, Section X.B. on Proficiency Classifications, it states that proficiency points are added based on placements in the final but only if there was a quarter final. If only mentions “Syllabus”, “Novice” and “Pre-Championship” proficiency classifications for accumulation of points. It doesn't mention a proficiency point system based on medal-level sub-classifications.

So if someone never dances in an event that has a quarter-final they will never accumulate proficiency points. So someone who dances at a championship quality level could dance pre-bronze forever if willing to limit to the syllabus figures. Probably would not happen to this extreme, but people would to continue to dance and win at lower levels past the point where they should have moved up. Different people will have different standards on what that point is, and this may be further distorted for those inclined to collect ribbons. OTOH, someone who happened to win 3 bronze syllabus events that had quarter-finals would be pushed to novice.

My take on this is that significant improvement to the rulebook would be necessary before there would be a reduction in complaints about sandbagging, even if enforced consistently.
Click to expand...
That's for amateurs. This is for pro/ams. Apples and oranges.
 
Yes, you are correct. That is for amateurs.

But where is any definition of proficiency points or the ranking system for pro/am students? I couldn't find any definition of that.
 
Larinda McRaven said:
You asked for it... a tracking system. So, now everyone has to register and everyone has to pay.
Click to expand...

I have to admit, as someone competing in "novice bronze", I'm glad to see this. Very shortly before the Crystal Ball in Chicago, I decided to do my first competition. (Probably without enough competition prep-- but my teacher was game. So, that was fine.)

When I got there and saw some other "novices", I said: Wow! She's good for a novice. My teacher and another said they were pretty sure they'd seen her before. And before. Not certain.... but she looked pretty familiar.

I don't know the exact rules for "novice", but I do want to comply. I assume I'm being entered correctly. But the category doesn't make any sense if people can keep calling themselves "novice" and competing in that for a long time.

The only way to enforce things novice categories is to register everyone. Registration systems need to be designed and maintained, that costs money. Relative to all the other money I'm spending $25/year to pretty much cover the cost of a registration system strikes me as fair. I'll spend more than that foundation garments to make me look smooth rather than lumpy when competing.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
It might have actually been called "Newcomer Bronze", in which case the NDCA definition is for the first year of competing in NDCA comps (within 12 months of the first NDCA competition). Some competitions define it more restrictively. This does mean somebody can have been dancing for a while and just not competing and legitimately enter it.

Edited to add that I just took a quick look at the Crystal Ball website and yes, it is Newcomer Bronze. I didn't look hard, but I didn't see anything overriding the NDCA definition of Newcomer. Thus, somebody could have been dancing for awhile and been to several competitions during the past 11 months and 29ish days, and still legitimately entered that division.
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.

Dance Ads

Advertise on Dance Forums Reach dancers, teachers, studios, event organizers, and dance-friendly brands. View ad options
Back
Top