The fastest way to raise the level of a ballroom is to raise the level of the people teaching in it. Michael's work as a teacher trainer is aimed one level up from the student: giving instructors a rigorous, examinable system for why the dancing works, not just a sequence to copy. He builds exam content and a technique question bank for Dance Vision, and examines candidates for Dance Vision and USIBDA — the same standard he was measured against, now applied on the other side of the table.
The boards
Examiner — Chair of the Ballroom Department
Dance Vision began in 1992 as a Las Vegas video company — Wayne and Donna Eng filming the era's champions so that great teaching could travel beyond the room it happened in. It became the largest instructional catalog in ballroom, more than five hundred titles deep, and in 2001 the method behind it was standardized into the DVIDA syllabus — a full teaching system now recognized by the National Dance Council of America and used by hundreds of independent studios and teachers across the country. Where the older societies inherited their technique from London, Dance Vision built an American system from the floor up. It is the body Michael examines under as Chair of the Ballroom Department.
United States & International Ballroom Dancers Association — Examiner · Co-chair of the Examining Committee
The organization has carried three names. It began as the USISTD — the United States Imperial Society of Teachers of Dancing — in San Francisco in 1961, incorporated in New Jersey in 1967 to carry the ISTD's London-set standards into American studios, and for most of its life it was the Imperial Society's American examining body. It later became AIDA, the American International Dancers Association, broadening its reach across the American styles while keeping the rigor it inherited. In 2026 it took its current name, the United States & International Ballroom Dancers Association. It runs a full ladder of professional degrees — Student Teacher, Associate, Member, and Fellowship — across International Ballroom and Latin, American Smooth and Rhythm, and Theatrical Dance. Michael examines for USIBDA and co-chairs its Examining Committee.
Imperial Society of Teachers of Dancing, London — Fellow, Ballroom & Latin
The ISTD is the oldest and most influential of the three — founded in London on 25 July 1904 and reorganized in the 1920s into the technical faculties that still define it. Its Modern Ballroom branch dates to that 1924 restructuring; the Latin American faculty followed in 1951. When a teacher anywhere refers to "the technique" — positions of the feet, alignment, amount of turn, rise and fall, footwork, sway, contrary body movement — they are pointing, ultimately, at the system the Imperial Society set down and the champions who wrote for it. Today it conducts roughly 120,000 examinations a year across dozens of countries. Michael is a Fellow — its highest teaching credential — in both Ballroom and Latin.
For candidates
The whole process now has a page of its own — what happens in the room, what an examiner is registering while you dance, how long preparation actually takes, what the whole thing costs, and Michael's own examining rates. Almost none of it is published anywhere else, which is why it needed more room than a summary.
You'll be more ready than you think.
The credentials behind it
International Ballroom · International Latin · American Smooth (Dance Vision & USIBDA)
Fellow, ISTD (London) — Ballroom & Latin
American Rhythm · Theatre Arts (Dance Vision & USIBDA)
Dance Vision · USIBDA
AADTA Board of Directors · East Coast Vice President of the Professional Dancers Federation
For lessons and training information, get in touch.