The Future of Dance Pacifica

Backgrounder for a Discussion at the VBDS AGM 2011

(26 October 2011)

A Statement of the Issues

The Dance Pacific Ball (DP for short) is a ballroom dance competition, exhibition, and dance & dinner extravaganza that has been hosted for many years by the Victoria Ballroom Dance Society (VBDS). This event is unique within the greater Victoria area, and is one of the premier events of the year for VBDS. The competition is sanctioned by DanceSport BC, under the rules of the International Dancesport Federation, and attracts the best amateur dancers from around BC (and usually a few from neighbouring states or provinces). It allows us to showcase dancers at all levels, for our members and for residents of the Victoria area, and it provides a great opportunity for us to further promote awareness about Ballroom Dancing in our community. It has evolved to be a full day event, taking place on a Saturday each June.

The VBDS Board is currently discussing a series of problems related to the future of our annual Dance Pacifica Ball and Competitions. These include the following concerns:

(i) DP has for many years been a consistent money loser for VBDS (i.e. costs directly attributable to DP have over the past 10 years consistently exceeded revenues associated with DP, from ticket sales, sponsorship donations and in the past two years raffle ticket sales which netted in excess of $5000). The average loss for Dance Pacifica over the last several years has been $4300. The best possible outcome that is likely within our current venue, at SCP, is to break-even.

(ii) Attendance on the Saturday night for DP 2011 was down considerably from previous years. Attendance peaked in 2008 at 375+. Last year it was 280 and this year just over 200.

(iii) DP 2011 had a sizable deficit (as usual this was covered by VBDS from surpluses in other areas of our operations, like our monthly dances, the New Year's Dance, and membership fees); this increase in the DP deficit was partly, but not solely, attributable to (ii).

(iv) There is currently no DP Committee in place for 2012, and more significantly, there is currently no one available to chair the DP 2012 Committee.

The new Board will have to make a decision on the future of DP in 2012 no later than the end of January 2012. Any one of the preceding problems would have been a concern and taken into account in making this decision, but in light of all four of these problems, this will be an especially difficult decision for the Board in 2012.

Some High-Level Options Being Considered

In discussing how best to deal with these issues, the Board has so far been considering a range of four high-level options:

(A) Continue with DP 2012 based largely on the approach of the past three years but implementing a series of cost-control measures that have been recommended to the Board by the 2011 Committee; (B) Continue with DP 2012, but with a considerable enhancement of both the evening entertainment as well as promotion, in addition to implementing some of the cost-control measures recommended by the 2011 Committee, in an attempt to significantly increase attendance; (C) A possible variation on (B): ÒRe-BrandÓ DP as a high level competition and Show, holding competitions at the Gold level and above only, while spending significantly more on paid entertainment. (This would probably require the organization of another much less expensive competition for Silver and below, perhaps at some other time of year.); (D) Cancel DP for 2012 and use the time to put together a focused Òbrainstorm-groupÓ to work on ways to significantly re-vamp and re-design the DP Ball and Competitions for future years.

The Board is aware that, within each of these high-level options, there are a large number of more detailed sub-options available, and also that this list of high-level options is not exhaustive - other ideas are possible (e.g. it would be possible to ÒcombineÓ two of these high-level options so as to create a fifth - to plan to continue with DP in 2012, but to first convene a focused Òbrainstorm-groupÓ to work on ways to significantly improve DP prior to finalizing this decision). In short, there are fairly large number of options available for dealing with these problems, but the Board has a fairly limited time within which to make some kind of decision. And we are aware that none of the options list above deals effectively with the significant problem of identifying and securing leadership for DP.

Discussion of these Issues at the 2011 AGM

In advance of a decision on these matters to be made by the new Board in January 2012, the current Board has suggested that there should be a discussion of these issues with the membership at the 2011 Annual General Meeting.

The Board welcomes comments and input on these issues and problems: e.g. do we have the problems correctly identified? what is behind these problems? why have they arisen? and on the range of possible solutions - are there other high-level or detailed options that we should seriously consider? what are the advantages and disadvantages of each of the proposed solutions? how should we compare the relative pros and cons of each? how can we go about finding and providing the leadership required to make DP happen?