Solo Dance at U.S. Adult Nationals

Dear Friends,

This is a petition to show support for adding solo dance events to Adult Nationals. This proposal was recently submitted to the Adult Committee for review and to begin the process for officially incorporating solo dance events at Adult Nationals. Your signature on this petition will help in this process. With the decreased number of dance teams in all levels at Adult Nationals, and decreased participation in general, we feel it is the right time for adding solo dance events for the following reasons:

1) Dancers without partners could be seen competing and future teams for Adult Nationals would form for the partnered events.
2) This is a lucrative, large, and untapped market for Adult Nationals, but takes little time to run per competitor.
3) Solo dance is pure skating. It encourages good skating skills and rewards everything important in quality skating-good edges, power, flow, clean turns, musicality, etc.
4) Adult Sectionals that offer solo dance usually have many more solo dancers paying entry fees than teams. Solo dance has already proven popular and successful at Adult Sectionals and other USFSA Sanctioned All Adult competitions that offer it.
5) For the LOC, it would be an easy event to run. Most dance patterns are 1 1/2 or 2 times around the rink, taking up little time. The same music is used and standard, No need to even keep track of individual tapes/CDs for each competitor.
6) Ten years ago the solo dance test track was created. The judging criteria for the solo tests can be used to judge the solo dance events. This should make the addition of solo dance events at Adult Nationals relatively smooth. Dancers may enter solo dance by passing the solo, partnered, standard, or adult track dance tests.

In polling skaters of all levels, age and background there seems to be an interest from the following types of skater:

1) The large group of collegiate skaters competing in the highly successful solo dance events who are graduating but wish to continue solo dance on a national competitive level. This would bring in the 21-25 age group that seems to be missing at Adult Nationals and help close that gap.
2) Adult dancers who would love to compete dance at Adult Nationals but have no partners. This group has been completely left out of Adult Nationals for over a decade.
3) Freestylers who would also like to compete solo dance.
4) Dancers with partners who would also like to compete solo dance.
5) Skaters who long ago gave up on the hope of competing dance at Adult Nationals picking up their dancing again to attend.
6) Skaters who physically cannot compete freestyle any longer due to age or injury but still want to compete at Adult Nationals while honing good basic skating skills. Solo dance is something one can do for life, thus ensuring we keep adult competitors coming back to attend Adult Nationals for a long time.
7) Adult National competitors looking to add another event to make the expense and long trip more worthwhile. There seems to be quite a few who have recently stopped competing or are considering doing so for this reason.

Thank you for your consideration.