Sri, your enthusiasm is admirable but please don't speak for all of us.
Certainly a good social outing! But should it be a sport, even an
Olympic sport? If you want to think about where ballroom dancing may be
heading, read articles in back issues of the NY Times sports section on
participants in similar Olympic events such as ice skating and gymnastics.
By "similar" I mean judged subjectively; having an aesthetic component;
accompanied by music; and having competitors judged against a standard
rather than against a clock, scale, or each other directly. Competitors in
such sports start when they are children (sometimes peaking when they are
children), often have a stunted family and academic life, and require lots
of money. They want to win; to do so they need to make money for their
corporate sponsors and to get an edge on their competitors any way
possible. The epitome of this syndrome may have been when the disgraced
and debt-ridden Tanya Harding was exiled to Oregon and the Japanese
professional wrestling federation made her a serious contract offer to
"compete" as a wrestler in Japan. Whether you want to speculate that her
sport attracted somebody like Harding to it or whether she was made into
who she was by the competition, I don't think that dancing would benefit
from more competitiveness.
But corporations benefit. Entertainment conglomerates and sponsors love
them for short periods. Professional dancers love them; already in the
case of ballroom and c/w dancing, many dancing teachers (local ones
excepted, thankfully) make their living giving lessons to advanced dancers
who want to beat other advanced dancers in competitions which are often
sponsored by profit-making companies. But where are the social figure
skaters or recreational tumblers that benefit from their example? Who's
getting a little more fit or meeting people because they could watch
professional gymnasts or ice skaters "win" by 0.005 points?
By contrast, ballroom dancing is still an activity that many folks do for
fun. We can do it using nothing more than a large room with a smooth floor
and some canned music, as the D.I. prove all the time. Maybe seeing
high-level ballroom dancing on TV encourages people to dance, but maybe
not. Maybe c/w dancing is more popular than ballroom because beginners see
c/w done informally by amateurs in jeans but ballroom done by professionals
in $1000 clothes, and they go for what they can relate to. Referring to
the fancy steps and intimidating complexity of the competitions on TV,
people have asked me, "Do you do THAT?" I'd rather not have to answer that
question any more....
Regards, Ron
PS As an exercise, consider the companies that might gain by sponsoring
dancers. Deodorant, ibuprofen, Johnson's Paste Wax, Geritol.... This is
what's coming if couple dancing is headed for the big time!