A Beginner’s Guide to Competitive Ballroom Dancing

If you’ve ever seen Dancing with the Stars, you might think you have some inkling of what ballroom dancing is. Yes, we do the cha-cha, the quickstep, and the tango, but the dancing you see on ABC’s hit show isn’t a great representation of what happens in the world of competitive ballroom dancing. I hope to provide here a glimpse into the structure and reality of the competitive ballroom dancing world. By the end of this article, you’ll know about the various dances involved and what the “competitive” part of competitive ballroom dancing really means. Maybe you’ll even be inspired to go out and try your own hand (or feet, in this case) at ballroom dancing!

The Dances

There are four “styles” under the umbrella term “ballroom dancing”: Latin, rhythm, smooth, and standard. I like to divide these into the “Cuban dances” and the “Disney dances.” Namely, the Cuban dances are Latin and rhythm and include dances originating in Cuba (though not all are from there) and the Disney dances are the ones you’d see in a Disney movie, such as the hallmark dancing scene from Beauty and the Beast. The full list of dances goes as follows:

• Latin: Cha-cha, samba, rumba, paso doble, and jive
• Rhythm: Cha-cha, rumba, swing, bolero, and mambo
• Standard: Waltz, tango, Viennese waltz, foxtrot, and quickstep
• Smooth: Waltz, tango, foxtrot, and Viennese waltz

There are a few things to note here. First, you might notice that a few styles have the same dances. That is true in name, however the way these dances are danced, their technique, steps, etc. is very different depending on the style. The Latin and standard dances are danced around the world and thus are collectively called the International style dances, while the rhythm and smooth dances are danced almost exclusively in the United States and are thus called the American style dances. The American style dances emerged from the International style dances and, from the list, we can see that rhythm is the American version of Latin and smooth that of standard, with some deletions and additions of specific dances. Recently, American rhythm and smooth were featured at the Blackpool Dancesport Festival, one of the largest ballroom competitions in the world, held in Blackpool, England. So the American styles are slowly expanding beyond the borders of the U.S.

While the differences between Latin and rhythm are more subtle and related primarily to technique (hip and leg action, timing, basic steps), there is a much more obvious difference between smooth and standard. In the standard dances, the couple must remain in “closed hold,” seen to the left, and cannot break this hold for the entire dance. With smooth, the Americans have decided to be a bit more relaxed and allow for the breaking of this hold, which opens the door for an entirely new set of moves, positions, and interpretations of the various dances, which you can see in the video below. I’m going to step away from the role of unbiased reporter for a second and say that I’m more drawn to the greater freedom and artistry that the American style dances allow and, if I had to pick, I would have to choose those dances as my favorites.

The Competitions

Now that we have a better idea of which dances we’re talking about (or at least their names) when we say “ballroom dancing,” you might be wondering how the “competitive” part fits in. I have the most experience with collegiate competitions, so I will primarily discuss those, but I will also mention professional competitions in the U.S. at the end and address some of the differences between the two.

Colleges and universities around the country have their own ballroom dance teams and many host their own competitions. I compete primarily in the New England area and some of the major competitions in that region are hosted by Harvard University, MIT, Brown University, Boston University, and my alma mater, Tufts University. I’ve also traveled out of New England to a few competitions in New York and Maryland.

These competitions are usually hosted on campus in a ballroom or — if a fancy ballroom isn’t available — in the school’s gymnasium. Competitors dance in “heats” usually of around six to twenty couples, depending on the round (quarter-final, semi-final, final, etc.) and the size of the competition. Sometimes, smaller competitions only have a few couples competing in a certain level and/or style. That brings me to the next part: the levels.

Skill Levels

There are two main skill levels for collegiate competitions: syllabus and open. The main distinction is that the syllabus levels may only dance a certain set of steps/moves/figures within that level and cannot deviate outside of that. The open levels can dance any steps they wish, within the boundaries of the particular dance (so it wouldn’t be wise to do samba steps in a waltz, for example).

Within the syllabus level, there are four sub-levels: newcomer, bronze, silver, and gold. These are organized according to skill and time spent in the particular level. There are various rules and regulations regarding that tell a dancer which sub-level he or she should be in, but I won’t bore you with the details here.

The open level has a few sub-levels as well: novice, pre-champ, and champ. The distinction between these levels is far less sharp than the differences between the syllabus levels and is usually based on skill. The larger competitions usually have separate heats for the different open levels (meaning the pre-champ dancers will dance in a separate round from the champ dancers, for example) but the smaller competitions usually combine the open events into one heat and either have an “open” competition where the dancers compete against each other regardless of level (novice, pre-champ, or champ) or the judges will judge the dancers separately, essentially having multiple competitions at the same time.

Competition Structure

Collegiate competitions are usually organized according to style, so all the rounds for smooth will be danced, then all those for standard, and so on. Some competitions separate the syllabus and open events, usually doing the syllabus events during the day and the open events during the evening as a sort of gala event, sometimes accompanied by a show by an amateur or professional couple.

My partner Emily and I at Brown Ballroom Dance Competition, October 28, 2018, competing in the gold smooth tango final

As I mentioned above, there are a variable amount of couples on the floor at once, depending on the floor size and the number of couples in the event. Each dance of the style is danced in a series of rounds (again, depending on how many couples are dancing), usually a quarter final, then semi final, then final. For all rounds besides the final, each couple’s goal is to get to the next round. The judges simply write down the couples they wish to see dance again in the next round; they are not ranked until the final. There are typically six to eight couples in the final and each judge ranks all of the couples and those scores are tallied up to get a final ranking.

The judges are all looking for something different when marking couples and there is no magic formula to advance all the way to first place. Some judges look only for proper technique and frame, some look only for the performance aspect, and some look for a combination of both. While one judge might overlook a couple’s poor structure in smooth, for example, for an engaging choreography and show, another might not mark them because of that poor structural basis. Almost all judges look for a couple’s understanding of the music, though. If you’re not on time, you’re probably not going to be marked.

Professional Competitions

In the U.S., many professional competitions have a number of different competitions within them. There is, of course, the main professional competition, in which professionals compete in one to two of the four styles (if two, the dancers are usually “nine-dancers” who compete in the American styles, or “ten-dancers” who compete in the International styles, but sometimes there are couples that dance rhythm and Latin, for example). There are also amateur competitions, which are very similar to the professional rounds, except that the dancers are less experienced.

Beyond these traditional competitions, many competitions in the U.S. also feature pro/am (professional/amateur) events, which are events where professionals who work as coaches or at a studio dance with their students. Only the student (the amateur) is judged in these events and there are numerous skill levels that I will not get into here.

Other events include night club sessions (dances such as salsa, merengue, hustle, and bachata), theater arts, cabaret, and most competitions usually have a big-name professional couple perform a show, which is often the most popular event of the competition.

While the order of the dancing and set up of the heats, events, and other technical aspects are different from that of collegiate competitions, the fundamental principles of competitive ballroom that underlie the collegiate circuit apply to professional competitions. Basically, the judges are looking for good dancing, whatever that means to the judge. It’s a subjective system and oftentimes the judges don’t agree on who should get what placement, but with enough judges on the floor the averages work out to get a pretty good picture of who the best dancers really are.

I’ve spent many a weekend over the past five years attending or competing in a competition and I get the same feeling of excitement every time I enter the venue and see the sparkling dresses and smell the overwhelming quantities of hairspray and cologne. There are a lot more specific details about competitions that I have gathered from my experience that I could discuss here, but I only wanted to give a brief overview of the world of competitive ballroom dancing here. If you’ve ever been curious about what competitive ballroom entails, I hope this short introduction has answered some of your questions. If you have specific questions that I didn’t address here, leave a comment below!

Originally published at urbancitizenblog.com on January 4, 2019.