British Dance Council

 

SEQUENCE ADVISORY COMMITTEE

                                                                                        Address for correspondence

Mr. Roy Sharpe, Chairman

2 Hill Rise, Holcombe Brook

                                                                                                                                       Rams bottom

                                                                                                                                                  BURY

                                                                                                                                           Lancashire
                                                                                                                BL0 9QS

 

23 September 2006

 

Dear Mr. Ridley

 

Thank you for your letter of the 28th July 2006 where I replied to you on a personal note but not as Chairman of the BDC Sequence Advisory Committee.

 

You will remember at that time that I stated that the Committee was trying to have included in the Come Dancing series a section related to sequence alongside ballroom and latin and this is still progressing. The main stumbling block seems to be the problem of obtaining statistics relating to the number of people that actually participate in sequence dancing in general. We have sufficient details relating to the actual numbers that are participating competitively both in Professional, Amateur, Junior & Juvenile events both in open competitions and also in medalist competitions, and are proving healthy.

 

The main problem is the numbers of social dancers, and I am sure you agree that this is difficult to obtain, Television however relies on statistics and viewing figures, for a case to be presented, but we are still pursing this as best we can. Any help from Sequence organisations and clubs will help our cause. I hope that you can help in this direction.

 

The comments in the survey mainly relate to the number of dances being released and the number of competitions. The BDC have stated in the past that no new dance competitions will be issued and in fact applications have in the past few years been refused. The intention is that as a competition is ended it will not be reissued or replaced.

 

You will appreciate that it is impossible to cancel an existing competition, as all of them have been in operation for many years, it is also difficult regarding timing of competitions but the Associations have tried to redress this situation recently by moving their inventive dance competitions away from their annual general meeting weekends and place them at more appropriate times.

 

Some of the comments on your web site recently have asked for markings to be shown for each competition this would then mean that placings would be available and people would then start to want to dance the second place winning dance and so on. The number of dances would then increase from the present level to well over 180 per year, I am sure you agree that nobody wants to go down this route.

 

I hope that the above comments are helpful, but may I turn the situation around and ask your members what they want the BDC to do to help them.

 

The qualified professionals always have a route for concerns direct to their respective delegates represented on the BDC or their teaching organisations delegate on the BDC Sequence Advisory Committee, the unqualified professionals are not really the concern of the BDC, and I don’t know how the BDC can help them.

 

Yours faithfully

 

Roy Sharpe

Chairman