1st Pro-Am competition

[SwingWaltz]

Woohoooo! I did my first Pro-Am competition on the weekend at the South Pacific Dancesport Championships.
8 couples entered in total, danced a semi and then a final in the evening. Finished 4th out of 8 couples. Very happy!

That's all, just wanted to post something here cause finally I'm doing Pro-Am. 

Ok, perhaps a question. Do you think Pro lead/Am follow has an advantage over Am lead/Pro follow?

[QPO]

well I think that the Male Pro Lead has it easier than the reverse, but on the ohter hand if she is a good pro she would be a good follow and does not have to throw you around...

so not sure now  but the result was great for you!

[elisedance]

Woohoooo! I did my first Pro-Am competition on the weekend at the South Pacific Dancesport Championships.
8 couples entered in total, danced a semi and then a final in the evening. Finished 4th out of 8 couples. Very happy!

That's all, just wanted to post something here cause finally I'm doing Pro-Am. 

Ok, perhaps a question. Do you think Pro lead/Am follow has an advantage over Am lead/Pro follow?

As Q said, thats usually the case - its easy to lead a follower into higher level dancing but hard to do the same to a leader.  That said, judges adjust for that here and give the guys a break else they would never win. 

A bigger factor for us (I asked this on another topic and we may have a topic devoted to this on this board) is whether any of your competitors were dancing with someone famous - or more famous than you.  They almost always win - partly because the famous are often the better dancers anyway but I think there is another factor - the judges may feel uncomfortable putting, for example, the national champion second even if her/his partner goof up...

[dlgodud]

Congratulations!

I did my first competition and pro-am on last Friday.
I had a lot of fun indeed.
I cannot wait until my next competition which is not scheduled yet. 

[elisedance]

Congratulations!

I did my first competition and pro-am on last Friday.
I had a lot of fun indeed.
I cannot wait until my next competition which is not scheduled yet. 

Did you do the poll DGD?  Sounds like you are mosly a competitor!

[SwingWaltz]

Congratulations!

I did my first competition and pro-am on last Friday.
I had a lot of fun indeed.
I cannot wait until my next competition which is not scheduled yet. 

Congratulations to you too!

Pro is UK now competing. Won't have lesson for 3 month, our next comp is in April 2011.

Sort of raises the question of what do you do when your pro is away for competition for an extended period of time. 

[elisedance]

Congratulations!

I did my first competition and pro-am on last Friday.
I had a lot of fun indeed.
I cannot wait until my next competition which is not scheduled yet. 

Congratulations to you too!

Pro is UK now competing. Won't have lesson for 3 month, our next comp is in April 2011.

Sort of raises the question of what do you do when your pro is away for competition for an extended period of time. 

Get an AM practise partner?

Its a real problem - you could of course take lessons from a different pro, perhaps from the same studio.

[QPO]

yes I would go to another pro. you wou;ld think the pro would have a contingency plan for her students.

[ttd]

Maybe we can break this off into a separate question - what do you do when you have a long break from pro-am lessons.

I have been in a situation when I had a long-distance pro-am partnership for about a year and a half. I never had a break from lessons that long, though, I think it was 4 weeks at most. My teacher helped me find another teacher, and made sure we all were on the same page (that other teacher was a bit of canceler though, so lessons with him didn't work out as well as I'd like to). Also when my teacher was in town, we'd cram all lessons we could into those few days (like 9-10 hours over 3 days). I never got an am practice partner, though. I didn't feel that it will be a very efficient way to practice - considering that there were no available leads who were close to my level where I live. Basically I would have to take a lower level guy and wait for him to "level up" (to borrow video games terminology). And once my teacher moved back within driving distance, we don't have that many breaks (maybe 2 weeks here and there, but nothing major). But I recently considered asking a pro-am guy recently to form a practice partnership, I think he has a potential even though he just did his first competition doing american bronze smooth, but I decided against it. The skill gap is just too big to close in a reasonable amount of time.

[dlgodud]

Congratulations!

I did my first competition and pro-am on last Friday.
I had a lot of fun indeed.
I cannot wait until my next competition which is not scheduled yet. 

Congratulations to you too!

Pro is UK now competing. Won't have lesson for 3 month, our next comp is in April 2011.

Sort of raises the question of what do you do when your pro is away for competition for an extended period of time. 

It's a tough situation. I know. My current teacher was away for 3 months and I did not have a teacher at the moment. Of course, I tried to take lessons from my previous teacher, but it did not work out. So I waited for 3 months until he came back. I think he will probably do it again, so I plan to take some standard lessons from a teacher in the same studio. Or I have another latin teacher whom I can go occasionally and take lessons from.