By Katie Flashner | The Girl With The Tree Tattoo

I’ve written about the costs that come with being a pro-am ballroom student and how to get the most value out of your dancing dollars. What about the other side of the pro-am partnership? 

As students, we dance because we love it. It ignites a passion in us and provides an escape from the daily grind. We dance to get more physically fit or make new friends. Dance can act as therapy on all fronts — physically, emotionally, and mentally. 

Those who carry the title “professional dancer” also dance for another reason — it’s their job. 

Unfortunately, a student’s dancing dreams don’t always align with their professional dance teacher’s career path. The blurry line between business and personal can be hard to navigate for a ballroom student. We develop strong emotional bonds with our teachers, and so it’s easy to feel abandoned if our teacher leaves us, even if it’s just business. 

It can be easy to forget while you’re getting lost in a beautiful waltz, but ballroom IS a business. Dance teachers go to work just like anyone else. We, as the students, are their clients, which means we are part of their job. I edit one report after another at my job. Ballroom instructors teach one lesson after another at theirs. And like anyone else, they may be on the lookout for new or better opportunities, especially if they are just starting out. Maybe they want to compete on a professional level and are looking for a pro dance partner. That search may lead them to move out of the area. Maybe teaching dance was fun for awhile, but they find their true passion in something else. Maybe they simply want to get paid more and are looking for the chance to leave the studio life and go independent.

The studios have their own business motivations as well. If your teacher leaves, the studio will, of course, prefer you to just switch to another teacher instead of following your first one. The studio wants to keep your business, simple as that. Different studios handle staff turnover in different ways. Some take a proactive approach and encourage students to work with multiple instructors, so if one teacher leaves the studio, the student will still have someone to dance with. Some will keep a teacher’s departure very hush-hush. The teacher is simply gone without explanation. For a student, the departure of a teacher can be difficult to process, especially if it seems sudden and you’re left wondering what to do with your prepaid package of private lessons.

It’s part of the overall pro-am conundrum. We become incredibly emotionally invested in our ballroom dancing, and by extension, our partnerships with our dance teachers, but they won’t be at the same level. While dancing with them is our sole focus, dancing with us is not theirs. They need multiple student partners in order to make a living. 

It can be a bit of a downer to think money is the reason our teachers are dancing with us and the studio owner looks so happy to see us. It tarnishes the ballroom fantasy. 

Money isn’t the only reason though! Most dance teachers love their jobs and love working with their students. Studio owners opened their doors in order to bring dance to as many people as possible. But that doesn’t mean they don’t need to get paid!