Duffers Guide to Grade Progression

This is a rough guide to the BDC rules about going up through the ranks.

Basically, you go up the grades as you win competitions, you can win a certain number of comps at each grade before going up. This is often known as losing a life. To count as a win, there has to be a field of at least 6 couples - any less and you don't lose a life.

You are allowed to compete at higher grade, but if you win (with 6 or more couples in the comp), you automatically become that higher grade.

There are other rules about this, but we’ll cover that in a minute.
Lets look at the grades and the number of lives you get. We’ll start with the young ones...

The Juveniles:
At this level there are three grades;

• Beginner,
• Novice
• Advanced.

Beginner
You can win two comps at Beginner before moving up to Novice.

Novice
Remember, to compete in comps above Beginner, you must join EADA!
You have a grand total of 4 lives at Novice before you shift up to Advanced.

Advanced
For Juveniles, this is top banana!

Other Ages
For all other age groups, there are 6 levels of grade;

• Beginner,
• Novice,
• Intermediate,
• Pre-Championship,
• Championship
• International.

So this is how you move up through these grades:

Beginners
These are usually 1,2 or 3 dance comps–
Lose 2 lives move up to Novice (remember EADA membership needed for Novice and above)

Novice
lose 4 lives move up to Intermediate

Intermediate
lose 4 lives move up to Pre-Championship

Pre-Championship
win a Championship Event.

Championship
You move up to International level when you are selected to represent your country.

International
Top banana! (But you can still do championship events).

Some more stuff about losing lives:
You don't lose a life doing a medal comp, or a comp only open to one school, or an 'experimental' age group, like under 10s for example. Also, if you win a team match, again, that's ok. - no life lost there.

You don’t lose a life on a qualifying comp where the final is at a later date (i.e.like a qualifying heat for Stars of the Future). BUT ...contests that are advertised as heats but do not have a final later do count towards lives lost. (So slapping the word “heat” on comps doesn’t work!)

Note: You are allowed to win one contest where it is a heat in a competition with a subsequent final without losing a life. However, any subsequent win in any contest with more than 6 entrants whether classed as a heat or not, will count as a life. For example, week 1 you win a heat – you do not lose a life. Week 2 you win another heat for the same event – then you lose one life. This stops people flying around the country only doing heats to avoid going up a grade.

Having said that...
If you qualify at one grade for an event where the final is later - (like Stars for example), then go up a grade before the final, you are still entitled to go to the final at the lower grade.

Being placed first in different age categories in the same grade counts towards the ‘4 wins’ rule (i.e. 2 wins in Open Novice and 2 wins in Senior Novice).

Being placed first in a higher grade competition where there are 6 or more entrants means that you automatically go up to that level (i.e. You compete at Novice level but then win a contest at Intermediate level means that you can no longer compete at Novice level because you are now Intermediate.

If there are less than 6 entrants in the competition then no lives are lost.

Winning a comp in one style, (ie Ballroom,) has no effect on your grade in the other style (ie Latin), you can be a Championship level at Latin and Novice at ballroom for example.

Winning comps with that consist of the two styles - ie 2 Ballroom and 2 Latin does not effect your grade.