I define a "Professional" as anyone who receives compensation for teaching or performance of latin or ballroom dance. compensation example: money, housing, or food, they are called professionals in America. Europe has a more liberal definition which I dis agree with.
"Amateur" if I use the old definition is someone who with great skill level does a "hobby" or"sport" for the love of it. and does other things for financial gain.
Would an amateur who receives $150 for a "demonstration" now become professional? According to my beliefs yes they are no longer Amateurs.
I am curious where would you draw the line? j.
This is discussion of defintion only please.

jo

Lifestyle choices as a guide? I think $5,000 is still too high a cutoff, when I truned pro I found i spent most of my time teaching beginner dancers all though I wanted pursue my own "higher" level of dance wanted only to play with the most talented of st udents. As an elite amateur who do I teach and trade time and money with? Beginners? unlikely but most pros I know including myself enjoy developing advanced dancers too.
The lifestyle choice once you are acknowledged as pro does not mean we are in cont rol of our dacve development but "At the ready" to assist and grow other dancers often at the detriment of our own abilities. ONe effect in canada is that the amateur is not currently pushed to turn pro despite wanting to get money from the thing they are doing and pick and choosing who they teach. My would I like to do that too and skip doing the basic step again.j. Oh but as a pro I only teach "hobby " dancers? therfore I should not want to do the show for money i get confused this sounds a little bitter sorry.j ;-p

jo

I'm a professional dance teacher. In my lifetime I have received money and other forms of compensation for doing a great many things, including playing or writing music, photography, art, programming, teaching, helping people with their computer problems, taking care of friends' children, running an errand, selling items through ebay, and more. However, I don't beleive my having received compensation qualifies me as a professional musician, photographer, artist, programmer, teacher, computer technician, day care worker, gopher, or salesman. There is much more to the definition of professional, in my opinion, than simply having received some form of compensation.

On the other hand, I've seen amateurs who spend most of their day practicing at the dance studio, winning scholarship money at competitions and, now with the more relaxed USABDA rules, even teaching a few lessons... which makes me start to wonder what criteria are left to set them apart from me.

I do understand the frustration of many top U.S. competitive amateurs. Ballroom dancing lacks the corporate sponsorship opportunities of most other sports. You can't make a living competing as an amateur, and so you must find a source of income elsewhere, which takes time away from your dancing. It's a bit of a catch 22.

Still, although I do understand the frustration, that doesn't change my answer to any amateur who would make such arguments: If you want to make a living with your dancing, turn pro. If you don't want to turn pro, then make money some other way.

In the end, it doesn't bother me to see amateurs taking home a bit of "scholarship" money here and there. As I said, simply receiving compensation for doing something does not qualify someone as a professional. It takes more than that. If you're making enough money to actually make a living, that's where I would draw the line.

But there's more to the definition than just money. I think time plays a role, too. For example: A trophy housewife who spends 8 hours per day taking dance lessons financed by her rich husband may be able to get away with entering competitions as an amateur, but it wouldn't sit well with me. If her life's work is based on dancing -- if she spends a great majority of her time perfecting dancing as a skill -- then I can't imagine considering her an amateur, even if the money comes from another source.

For all the reasons mentioned above, I do not support allowing amateurs to teach dancing as a source of income. Teaching provides enough income from which one can make a living. So if they want to teach and therefore make a living, they should turn pro. A little scholarship money here and there is ok, but there should be a limit on the amount. And that limit should be designated based on an amount which makes it impossible to make a living purely by competing.

Jonathan

In the US, you are a professional if you meet any one of the following criteria:

- have passed a professional examination
- receive compensation from performing, teaching, demonstrating, partnering, or competing dance
- belong to the NDCA as a pro
- compete in a professional division or Pro/Am partnering an amateur

Certification is not necessary in the US.

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.