British Dance Council
SEQUENCE ADVISORY COMMITTEE
Address for
correspondence
Mr.
Roy Sharpe, Chairman
2
Hill Rise, Holcombe Brook
Rams
bottom
BURY
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