York Come Dancing is to be cancelled for the next academic year, amid fears that running the event would prevent York Dancesport from meeting its full competitive potential.
Following speculation over the cancellation of the event, Dancesport’s President, Abigail Wilson, spoke exclusively to Vision about the decision.”It’s about the society – there’s no time to put York Come Dancing on.” She also claims that running the event would “adversely affect our aims.”
As a competitive society, Dancesport represents the University at events like Roses and the NUDC (Northern Universities’ Dance Competition). They recently won 3 out of 4 available points at this year’s Roses.
Wilson noted that training was very important for the society teams, and claimed that running York Come Dancing would mean “little or no training, and the event would clash with things.”
Team Captain Emily Sargeant agreed with the measure, noting that it was a “very difficult” decision to make and that “ultimately it wouldn’t end up working – it’s hard to find a balance between Dancesport as a society and Dancesport as a team.”
However, Vice-President Richard Barker has spoken out against Wilson’s decision saying that “the first YCD was set up as a one off event, but the repeated success this academic year goes to show that it is an event that campus has enjoyed.
“Although Dancesport is a competitive society, this is only one element of the society’s mission statement, and one of the main ones is to provide a platform on which anybody can learn Ballroom and Latin American dance. In my opinion, an event such as York Come Dancing brings unprecedented publicity to the society, and makes people aware of it, people who may have been interested in learning things, but simply did not know about us.”
Barker, along with Sargeant, did admit that this year the timing of the event meant losing out on training for big competitions in Term 2, but noted that in its first year, York Come Dancing was held in Term 3 and worked successfully at the time.
Another of Wilson’s arguments was that previous Dancesport President Luke Malkin chose to run the event “whilst jeopardising his degree” and that she was not willing to do the same.
Barker’s response to this statement was that “although it is a lot of work, there is nobody saying that one single person has to take it upon themselves as Luke did, and in elections for the society, I said that I would create a smaller ‘YCD Committee’ to deal with the organisation of the event.”
Malkin also spoke to Vision, claiming that he would happily run the event again, but would be unable to without being a student. He agreed that it looked like the event “can’t happen this year.” In response to Wilson’s concerns over her academic success, he noted that “yes, my marks for that term weren’t great, but I was happy (or stupid) enough to do it and was really proud of what we all achieved.”
Wilson has conceded that Dancesport may still run some form of event alongside RAG but was unwilling to release details of it until more certain plans were arranged.