This is my opinion on what the amateur people and
the professional people usually do in regards to
ballroom dance....

Professional dancers

--usually run a dance studio of their own
--have enough money through their lessons and
other income for top-level competitions
--especially in competitions, they have much
more decorative costumes than even that of
amateurs who are equally dressed in costume
garb
--often give away their costumes and ballroom
gear if they don't want any
--often dance with a private teacher or private
coach

Amateur dancers

--are mainly students, graduate assistants, or
people not in high-paying jobs
--don't usually have enough dance proficiency for
the 'superbowl competitions' like Blackpool
--usually are taught ballroom and other dances
through group lessons and not a private
teacher
--at other times, they attend group dance workshops
before or after the competition

My suggestion: Limit amateurs to a certain amount of yearly dance-related income. As I mentioned before, this amount should be far less than one can reasonably make a living from. I think it would be easiest to have one single combined income limit, rather than a separate limit each for teaching, competition winnings, and shows. This gives the amateurs at least some flexibility in terms of how this income is earned.

For example, if the limit were $5,000 per year per person, it would allow a single person to teach as many as 2 lessons per week at $50/hr, or 4 lessons at $25. If a couple dances shows for pay, each partner would have to teach fewer hours to allow for show-based income, or reduce their lesson rate. The same goes for champion couples who win prize money at competitions.

You may think it strange to have a system in place whereby the better a couple gets, the less they are allowed to teach (or the less they are allowed to charge for lessons). But I see a distinct advantage to that system: As a couple gets better and better, they feel more and more compelled to turn pro.

One of the reasons we have a professional / amateur distinction (as well as various levels within each group) is to give dancers a way to compete against others of similar ability. By encouraging those at the top to hurry up and move to the next level, we might strike a better balance of ability in the competition circuit. This should not only appeal to peoples' sense of fairness, but it would also provide a more encouraging environment to those at the lower levels, who might otherwise give up quickly after a few times being judged directly against someone like Victor Fung.

Recently there was (and possibly still is) a group of people who are pushing for the complete elimination of the professional / amateur distinction. No doubt this would solve the current situation, but it would cause other problems. For example, it would have exactly the opposite effect as the solution I described above: There would be a much greater variety of ability levels competing against one another, which would discourage those in the beginning ranks.

And that, my friends, is why I feel that the best solution is to limit the Amateurs' annual dance-related income.

I am very new in the ballroom dancing.As a student my opinion as the following:
The really pro is the one can teach by their soul& heart and they know that if they give to the student 10 student (depents on student ability they can get only min 0-1 max 6-8 and those Pro does not afraid to show clearly every step from the first to the last to his/her student and the love to the dance art make them more higher than the Pro could thought in turn students respect their Pro and amateur teacher is the one who always afraids to show the steps clearly (maybe they do not remember the step)or does not want their student knows more to be perfect in the step (and all the time watch the clock.Excuse me but the student knows every teacher action and can name that by the correct name or can distingue the action to what his/her tearcher have in their mind.Sometimes student learns fast people put him on the hold (or give those big size students small jacket and leave the students as a dummy studentsgb(althought we students pay alot of monney for the lessons) and let that student do some competion home for feeling" you can compete with... "yourself as a doll" and you really get nothing more and you may not feel that you are really dummy one.(i believe every teacher has only one lovelly student).The real pro can have a lot of good students as generations one after another but never student feels he/she is a dummy student.
The good dance may not be a good teacher ,and the good teacher alway can help the other to be better than himself-when the teach4er can do that he is the real professional teacher.

I'd much rather have the competent teacher
than the 'trained' one...

Once a student has gained a little experience,
he or she should have no trouble distinguishing a competent teacher from an incompetent one, and any degree in between. Regardless of the label, or the amount of money (if any) being charged.

Those students who don't have the experience to tell the difference tend to be the ones who get stuck with the least experienced pro in the studio. Because that teacher isn't yet good enough for the dedicated students, and by becoming a pro before having time to really
understand dancing as an amatuer, has to do their on-the-job learning at the expense of a paying customer.

Contrast someone's whose spent years as a client
of excellent teachers, gradually building their understanding and informally offering advice to friends. If that person gets to the point where they decide to formally take a few students, at least they've had time to gain competence without
passing their learning period off as professional teaching.

So what about someone who is say teaching 6 or 7 hours a week? Not enough to live on, just enough to offset some of their own dance expenses. This seems precisely the situation that the elite amateur program was designed to permit.

Which side of your line does that fall on?

Or, what about an amateur performing unpaid teaching?

(in the specific cases I'm thinking of, the amateurs in question are extremely well qualified, not only competively but also in their ability to communicate with students and achieve results - yet they earn their livings doing other things)

Nobody can force you to teach anyone you don't want to teach.

You seem to have made a decision to support yourself by teaching dance - pursuing that goal may require you to spend time doing things you do not enjoy. But you are perfectly free to be pickier about selecting students and supplement your income in some other manner if you don't find enough qualified students to pay the bills.

You chose to call yourself a professional (or took actions that you knew at the time would cause others to call you that). I believe you can petition your country's amateur governing body to reverse that status if you so choose. And if you can qualify - under the current or proposed elite amatuer type of program - then you could continue to teach whomever you felt like teaching in order to earn money to offset your dance expenses.

But you'd have to find some other way to make a living.

Amateur - someone who claimes to love dancing, but makes their living doing something else.

Professional - someone who [tries] to make their living through dance, regardless of how that task makes them feel about it.

$5000 was an arbitrary number for the purpose of illustrating a point, but since you mention it, I don't agree with "must not exceed dance-related expenses rule", either. (Besides, many competitive pros even have expenses greater than their dance-related income).



Nobody says they have to give up their non-dancing carrers. There is nothing in my definition (nor anybody else's that has voiced an opinion here) stipulating that a professional must only receive income from dancing, and not from anything else. I'm merely suggesting that if a person wishes to spend a considerable amount of time and make a considerable amount of money from his dancing, he take the designation of professional. I could care less what he does with his non-dancing time.

And, as it happens, there are many pros who must supplement their teaching income with other types of work. Some make more money from their non-dancing work than they do from their dancing. It seems a bit odd to me that such people can't call themselves amateurs (actually, they are technically allowed to if they want to jump through some embarrassing hoops -- see below).

I do not make the assumption that ALL top amateurs want to turn pro. The only assumption I make, which is a perfectly fair one, is that there are some amateurs out there who want to make money with their dancing, which I interpret as wanting to turn pro. The solution I offered only applies to these people -- not to all amateurs across the board. But to those who do want to make money with their dancing, it's perfectly fair to assume that they want to turn pro... they do want to turn pro! They just don't want to be labeled as such. They want all of the perks, but not the title. If such people have their way, literally the only thing separating them from the pros will be the word we use to describe them. How does the expression go? "If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck..."

I've heard the argument many times before that pro and amateur are not levels of dancing, and that there is nothing in the definition of amateur that suggests such. And while it's wonderful in theory, the reality is that professional is a level above amateur. And so it should be... professionals spend a majority of their time, energy, and resources perfecting their skill, while amateurs are those who have dancing as a hobby, secondary to their regular trade or line of work.

Furthermore, when an amateur couple has reached the absolute top of the competitive circuit and has nowhere left to go, what do they do? More often than not, they turn pro. And by most, this is considered a step up to the next level. When was the last time you heard of a professional couple reaching the top, and then "graduating" to the amateur circuit? Actually, when a pro wants to revert to amateur status, it is considered by most a step down (hence the word "revert"), and is frowned upon by a large portion of the community. So much so, in fact, that one must actually petition the governing bodies to obtain permission to do so.

Still don't agree? Then answer this: Why is there such a reluctance on the part of these money-making amateurs to adopt the professional label? If the only thing separating a pro from a money-making amateur is the label itself, why put up such a fight to maintain the label of amateur? I'll give you a hint: The only people who show such reluctance are those who are actively competing. That's right -- when you call yourself a pro, you have to compete against other pros. And to many amateurs at such a level, that means giving up your status as the big fish in the little pond. They know quite well that a finalist amateur might become no more than a semi- or quarter-finalist as a pro... maybe less.

So in spite of any dictionary definition you may read, to say that amateur and professional are not considered levels of dancing to some degree is an idealistic fantasy. And to stick to such a rigid interpretation of the word "amateur" does indeed beg the question: Why make a professional / amateur distinction at all?

Regards,
Jonathan

This hardly has anything to do with the topic we're discussing here, but you can compare it to the dentist/dental assistent roles:

The dental assistent is someone who is able to do all the routine things the dentist (normally) preforms at appointments. An assistent does NOT have to have a degree to be an assistent, you can simply join after highschool and apply at a(ny) practice. (At least, here in Holland...)

Does the assistent get payed? Sure, but not the same sallery as the dentist receives. Does she know the things the dentist knows? Sure, but to a certain degree.
Is she certified to do the things she does? When she gets fired, will she be able to start her own practice? No, because she's not a dentist.

Defining the professional status with "someone who gets payed for what he/she does" still doesn't make the dental assistent a dentist, nor does it make an amateur a professional. Of course, a dentist gets payed a lot more than the assistent. Maybe the difference in $$ per hour between amateurs and professionals is hard to tell, but you can't possibly call an amateur a professional if he/she never had the education to be one. No matter what he/she gets payed.

Another $0.02

"Carpe diem, quam minimum credula postero." - Horace

posted earlier by guest
--------------------------
Contrast someone's whose spent years as a client
of excellent teachers, gradually building their understanding and informally offering advice to friends. If that
person gets to the point where they decide to formally take a few students, at least they've had time to gain
competence without
passing their learning period off as professional teaching.
-------------------------
Yes and then they need to start the years of trainging it takes to be a fully qualified instructor too!. That is why I want a certified teacher especially for those who have competition aspirations. I do not suggest using a teacher in training for this purpose! j.. ñ

jo

And there are, for every one professional amateur, 100+ amateur professionals. ;-p