Information about the MIT Ballroom Dance Team and Competitive Ballroom Dancing

last update 8/20/05

We are presently recruiting for dancers to join us for the fall. ANY interested person in the MIT community is welcome. NO EXPERIENCE IS NECESSARY. The majority of people joining the team actually never had any ballroom experience! All you need is an interest. See what we are all about! There is no commitment for the first several months!

General Information
Instruction
Partnerships
Competitions
Other Activities
How to Join

General Information

We are the MIT Ballroom Dance Team, an organization of MIT students and affiliates who love competitive Ballroom Dancing. We help our members improve their dancing skill and support their participation in DanceSport competitions.

We are arguably one of the more successful teams in the country. For information regarding how MITBDT fares in competitions, click here.

Despite our competitive achievements however, we encourage ANYONE in the MIT community to join us as long as you have an interest in ballroom! There are NO try outs. As long as you have an interest, you will not be turned away!

Instruction

We offer professionally taught lessons each week, plus supervised practice time, and amateur lessons from the veterans on our team. Most members also practice privately with their partners. We learn and compete in both International and American styles, and our lessons are divided evenly between Standard/Smooth dances, and Latin/Rhythm dances.

Partnerships

You don't need a partner to join, or to take any of our lessons/workshops. One of the advantages of being on a team is meeting lots of dancers who also need partners. :) Some people will partner up immediately, but most team members dance with several different partners during their first year of competing. We would never force you to dance with anyone; partner decisions are completely up to you, but the more experienced team members will be happy to talk things over with you.

If you are having difficulty finding a partner, you may want to consider trying the MITBDT Partner Search.

Competitions

Team members are encouraged to participate in at least two competitions each semester, and most choose to attend even more. Most of these competitions are held in the New England Area by other colleges and universities. We host our annual competition in the spring.

Competitive Dances

There are 19 competitive ballroom dances, 10 in the International style and 9 in the Amercan style. They are further subdivided into Standard and Latin (International) and Smooth and Rhythm (American).
Standard

International Waltz
International Tango
International Viennese Waltz
International Foxtrot
International Quickstep

Latin

International Cha Cha
International Samba
International Rumba
International Paso Doble
International Jive

Smooth

American Waltz
American Tango
American Foxtrot
American Viennese Waltz

Rhythm

American Cha Cha
American Rumba
American Swing
American Bolero
American Mambo

Couples compete against others with similar training experience. In order to do this, events are usually divided up into different levels as listed below in order of level of achievement:

Newcomer/pre-bronze
Bronze
Silver
Gold
Prechamp
Champ

Newcomer through gold are considered to be "syllabus" levels where permitted figures are restricted to those specified in certain official syllabi (usually those sanctioned by the ISTD). Other syllabi include those taught by commercial institutions (such as Arthur Murray or Fred Astaire Dance Studios). Prechamp and Champ levels are considered to be "Open" levels (sometimes termed simply as "Open") and do not have any syllabus restrictions.

Level restrictions in competitions may be determined by length of time dancing (usually for the newcomer/pre-bronze and sometimes bronze levels) or previous achievement. The latter is usually determined based on how many times a couple may place in the finals of events. Most collegiate competitions use the YCN rules. Adult competitions tend to use criteria set by the USABDA.

Collegiate competitions are "amateur" competitions, competitions where both people in the partnership are amateurs. This is in contrast with "Pro-am" competitions (a student dances with his or her teacher) and "Professional" competitions (both members of the partnership are professionals).

Collegiate competitions are amongst the most competitive of the amateur competitions, especially for the syllabus levels. They tend to host extremely large fields of dancers. For instance, as an extreme case, the 2003 Harvard Beginner's Competition had 174 couples competing against one another for Bronze Swing! This is in stark contrast to many Pro-am competitions where there are often as few as two or three couples competing in an event. Collegiate dancers also tend to fare well in the so called "Adult" competitions, particularly in syllabus events, indicating that the level of achievement in collegiate dancing is high (for instance, you can check out the Yankee Classic 2004 where dancers who routinely compete in collegiate competitions fared as well as others). There is also an increasing number of “adult” dancers (as well as “junior” dancers) taking part in collegiate competitions.

The MIT Ballroom Dance Team has consistently performed well in competition. As a team, we had done well in team matches. For the past three consecutive years, we had won the MIT Competition’s team match, accumulating about twice as many points as the second place school (there are usually around 40-50 schools and institutions participating each year).

This past year, our rookie class in particular had done a phenomenal job. At Brown 2004, if team matches were taken into account, all 22 participating rookies made cuts to at least a semi-final and 21 of the 22 made at least one final (out of at least 182 dancers). Rookies usually dance at the bronze level the end of their first year, but in MIT 2005, one rookie couple ended up coming third overall in Silver Latin (out of 74 couples) and another placed out of Silver American Viennese Waltz. Over the summer, one of the rookies even competed in Pre-champ and placed 5th in Latin and 6th in Standard at USABDA Nationals!

Of course, this is not to say that by simply joining the team, you will do exceptionally well in competition. It is unlikely that this team (or probably any other as well) will ever have another rookie class with such outstanding results, however, we would like to continue to strive for that!

Click here for a listing of how MITBDT members had placed in competitions over the past several years.

Other Activities

Workshops and Fundraisers

We organize beginner workshops, as well as about three fundraiser dances per term. All events are open to the whole MIT community and non-MIT dancers. No experience or partner is necessary to attend them. For the lastest information on upcoming or ongoing events, see the events section of our web page.

Fun Stuff

Besides practicing and competing together, we often go out as a group to dance socially, or just hang around. The Team members also cooperate with the MIT Ballroom Dance Club; we teach lessons for them and enjoy attending their events.

Interested? For information about joining the team, click here.

For more information about the team contact us by clicking here.

Massachusetts Institute of Technology Ballroom Dance Team