BYU Ballroom Dance competition to allow same-sex couples

PROVO, Utah — BYU’s annual Ballroom Dance competition will have same-sex couples this year for the first time in history.

BYU hosts the U.S. National Amateur Dancesport Competition every March. This year’s dates are March 11-14.

“As we are hosting an event that is sanctioned by the [National Dance Council of America} NDCA, we are obligated to follow their rules and regulations,” BYU Dance Department Chair Curt Holman told The Universe.

KSL Newsradio contacted BYU for more information. They replied with this statement:

“In hosting ballroom competitions sanctioned by the National Dance Council of America, BYU has followed NDCA rules and will continue to do so.”

Holman told the Universe that the NDCA has always defined a couple as a man and a woman. But that changed last September, after a lawsuit was threatened.

Now the NDCA has no restriction on couples.

They say a couple is defined “as a leader and follower without regard to the sex or gender of the dancer.”

That means that this year at BYU, there could be two men dancing together in tuxedos, or two women in ball gowns.

The NDCA website says more than 3,000 registered couples and teams from around the country compete for National Championship Titles. There are 26 national judges and nearly 15,000 spectators are expected to fill the Marriott Center.

A well-known senior amateur ballroom couple said on Facebook that they would not be coming to this year’s competition. Katarina Lu and Xingmin Lu are husband and wife, but were upset because they thought BYU would exclude same-sex couples. But now they say they will attend after all.

Follow @kslmrichards