I'm getting a bit lost here, particularly with crossover to competitions - rules, and int vs adv.
What I read is that many people want to "improve" things. There appear to be issues regarding standards of competitions, facilities, rules, judging, and the standards of both individual couples and of partnerships, and amateur vs professional status.
Whilst it's a great ambition to make the MJ world a better place, in reality, perhaps it's just like anything else artistic or sporting - there will often be competing associations with slightly different interests. Many of the ballroom dancers out there will be familiar with the arguments, which association/style has the better teachers, the better standards, the better competitions etc??
One of the main elements in ballroom appears to be an umbrella organisation that the various teaching/style organisations belong to - this lays down rules/guidelines on teaching experience/standards, and some basic competition rules - eg beginners and novice can only dance a limited range of steps - allows easy comparison and encourages a level of technical accuracy at an early stage. Above that pretty much anything goes, so long as it’s recognisable as the relevant dance. Simple rules are that you can enter a comp at any level (and even dance at several levels at one comp), but once you've won you can't enter at a lower level, and once you've won a few you have to move up. That's geared around a pretty hectic open competition schedule, so would need some adapting to work for MJ; unless there were more comps (is that a good idea, especially if they were smaller?). This also assumes that all the MJ orgs could talk to each other, and then what happens to all the independents?
The other element is a dancers association (paid membership), with elected reps from the dancers, not discriminating or dividing by experience at all. The aim is to provide support for all dancers (competitors or not) and training for national representatives (now there's an idea?), and to represent dancers to other interested bodies, such as competition organisers.
There's also a promoters association, a professionals' organisation (which includes teachers and competitors), and a competitors association (which represents both amateur and professional). Confused, yes, I would be too.
What's clear is that there is a lack of transparency (perceived or real) in MJ judging, and confusion over how the different categories/levels should be defined. The first will only come from the various organisers getting together, agreeing something and then telling everybody how it works - especially what people are being judged on - surely if they know then putting it in writing and telling the competitors can only help – and publishing the judges’ marks. The second is also pretty simple; people compete because they like it or because they want to win - so make the levels break so that people can compete on a regular or occasional basis and stand a reasonable chance of winning. At the highest level (and possibly for a couple of age groups), introduce national ranking competitions and spread these around the country (say 1 a month and could include the big ones in this), dance at several (say 3 or 4) and your placings count towards a ranking. Oh yeh, and introduce a professional category - if you get paid money for teaching, DJing, or earn money from organising then you are a professional. If you are a dem or a taxi, then I'd say you're not a professional (but feel free to disagree!).
Hope this helps.
PS. I vote Divi as founding President of the MJDA.
Bookmarks