For those of you that are unfamiliar with dance competitions:
-Depending on which one, they can last from one day, to an entire week.
-They often consist of a couple dozen dance studios each with a large number of dancers, all with their own solos, duos, trios and medium/large group numbers. So lots of dance routines.
-The songs range from unbearable to ridiculous and the good ones are spliced and cut to fit into the narrow time span of the dance routines.
-It's expensive. Each dance routine requires payment for the choreography, song rights, costume, sets, the actual rehearsals, the entry into the competition and the expenses involved with traveling to another city just for this competition.
-Despite their costs, they hold little to no consequences. Awards are cheap plastic pins and buttons and the occasional trophy for that one dancer that's really good.
-There isn't one singular authority competition, there are dozens of them and each competition season can mean this will happen at least once a month.
-They're boring. Imagine watching shitty kids dancing mundane and repetitive dancing while their helicopter parents yell and hoot like there's no tomorrow.
-They're a blatant wallet drain but not one of the participants are willing to say it. The schedules come at a cost, you're not allowed to film anything because they sell you your participant's "professional" film at a high cost (and they're terrible), the food is marked up, the hotels around the area mark up their prices and there's shops for literally everything made by the same people that already charged you a ton just for the chance to watch your little loved ones dance.
-They're stressful: a child that's barely out of elementary school does not deserve to go through this much stress just to make their parents proud for less than a minute. It's costly, boring and useless and that time could be better spent actually bonding with your fucking child
If your family member is into dancing, I'd highly suggest you getting them out of these leeches disguised as competitive environments.
Sorry for the rant but I had to live with a decade of this shit and despite some fond memories of meeting my sister at her competition after my own swim meets (which were free), I couldn't help but to feel her talent was under appreciated and my parent's money was wasted.