— from a recent issue of Dance Notes.
 
Chuck Miller of Las Vegas, NV asks:

Ron Montez
(Coach and Adjudicator)
 
There is a stronger sense of nationality in the overseas countries. They're smaller and there is more standardization as a competition form because there is only standard and Latin. In this country we have American smooth, rhythm, swing and country western. In a big country like the United States it's very splintered and it's hard to have cohesion. Also, which should we get behind. American style or international style? I personally feel Americans rarely treasure what they have within their style. They're more impressed by European techniques and disciplines so they have an underlying sense of inferiority. The training methods in other countries  are more unified. They have congresses where the judges and coaches share information. They're more of one mind.  In other countries the couples are sponsored by national corporations to a greater extent than here. We haven't broken into that yet.

Maja Serve
(Coach and Adjudicator)
 
In the countries that I know of, (Germany, Norway, Denmark), the government puts money into sports; and since dancing is considered a sport there they put money into dancing as well. They're more organized in that they have training camps for the couples and invite coaches from outside the country to come and train them. Because the government is involved there is  more money for them to be organized. In the U.S. people have to put out the money themselves, so they need to get together to get coaches and to share the cost of flights and hotels. I think it's a matter of organization -- and someone willing to organize it.
 
Glenn Weiss
(Coach and Adjudicator)

I think that in most countries in Europe ballroom dancing has been considered a sport for quite awhile. The European countries support other sports so they support dancing also. It's only been in the last couple of years that we here in the United Sates have considered calling ballroom dance a sport, and now the dance competitions are beginning to adopt the name DanceSport. Before, it was always considered social dancing. 

Frank Regan
(Coach, Adjudicator and Choreographer)
 
One might make a blanket observation about this by stating that in the countries that do support dance, there is a healthier balance between altruism and commercialism. There are actually some countries who consider promoting something because it is socially and culturally the right thing to do. The fact that a large automobile or soft drink company are involved in advertising their product is a secondary consideration that is inevitably supported by the prime motivation. The culture in the United States, on the other hand, being much more dominated by philosophy of materialism reduces just about everything to a matter of simple economics. There is probably an upside to this, but I don't think anyone knows what it is yet. The down side is there is still an insufficient volume of dance people in America to create competition for the major activities such as football, basketball, baseball and all the other balls.