A dancer who has competed and won at an advanced level can enter a beginner section at your next event, and until now nothing stopped them. Organisers police this by memory. Skill bands make it a rule the platform enforces.
The two halves
Your level names stay yours. "Advanced" at your competition may be "Elite" at another. Nobody has to rename anything.
The skill ladder is shared by every organiser on the platform. It has five rungs:
| Rung | Band |
|---|---|
| 5 | Professional |
| 4 | Elite |
| 3 | Advanced |
| 2 | Intermediate |
| 1 | Novice |
Every dancer profile can carry one of these, or none at all, in which case they are Unrated.
The mapping is what joins the two: for each of your levels you say the highest band it admits. That is the only setup step.
Turning it on
- Open your event, go to Levels in the event editor (or the Levels step in the wizard).
- Switch on Enforce dancer skill bands at this event.
- Choose what should happen when a dancer is over the limit. There is no default here, and you cannot save until you pick:
| Choice | What the studio experiences |
|---|---|
| Warn only | The studio is told which dancer is over the limit, and can still enter. Every case appears in your Skill bands tab. |
| Block the entry | The entry cannot be submitted until the level is changed or you waive it. |
Warn only is the gentler start. Your studios are never stuck, and you see everything before the event runs. Block is stricter, and it needs you to be reachable while entries are open, because only you can waive an entry.
You can change this at any time.
- For each level, choose the highest band it admits.
Leave a level on Open and anyone may enter it. That is the default, and an event where every level is Open blocks nothing, so the panel warns you if you have turned enforcement on without mapping anything.
Your mapping is saved against your organisation, not just this event. Your "Advanced" then means the same thing at every event you run. That is deliberate: a band a dancer earned at your March event has to still mean something in June.
What the rule checks
An entry is flagged when any dancer on it is above the band that section's level admits. Whether that flag stops the entry depends on the choice you made above.
Dancing up is always allowed. A Novice may enter your Professional section; the rules are ceilings, not floors.
| Level | Admits up to | A dancer who is Advanced |
|---|---|---|
| Novice | Novice | Blocked |
| Intermediate | Intermediate | Blocked |
| Advanced | Advanced | Allowed |
| Open Section | Open | Allowed |
The studio sees the reason on the entry form, naming the dancer, before they get anywhere near submitting. On Warn only they can proceed past it; on Block they cannot.
Raising a band automatically
By default, competing at a level raises the dancer to that level's band if they were lower. Once a dancer has danced Intermediate, they stay Intermediate or higher.
This applies to solos only unless you change it, because a child dancing in an older group's Advanced routine has not personally reached Advanced.
The studio is warned before they submit, because only an organiser can lower a band afterwards. Withdrawing the entry later does not put the band back.
Unrated dancers
By default an unrated dancer may enter anything, which is what you want on your first run: your whole field starts unrated. Under Advanced you can require every dancer to have a band before an entry can be submitted, once your field has been rated.
Who can change a dancer's band
| Who | Set an unrated dancer | Raise | Lower |
|---|---|---|---|
| The dancer or their parent | Yes | Yes | No |
| Their studio | Yes | Yes | No |
| You, for a dancer in your event | Yes | Yes | Yes, with a reason |
| Platform support | Yes | Yes | Yes |
Raising is open to anyone who manages the dancer because it only ever restricts that dancer. Lowering is what someone would do to cheat, so it needs an organiser, and your reason is recorded on the dancer's history.
You can only change the band of a dancer registered for or entered in one of your events. Another organiser cannot quietly undo a promotion you made.
The Skill band audit tab
Your event dashboard gains a Skill bands tab listing every entry that places a dancer below their band, plus any you have waived.
Use it to:
- see problems at a glance rather than waiting for a studio to complain
- act on one entry with a note: on Block that is Waive, which lets the entry through; on Warn only nothing is being lifted, so it is Mark reviewed, which records that you have looked and drops the row out of the list needing attention
- catch entries moved into the wrong section after they were created
Either way the entry stays in the list, marked, with your reason. This never hides the fact, only the outstanding action.
Warn only relies on you opening this tab. It is the whole point of that mode. If you would rather not have to remember, use Block.
Turning it off
Switch enforcement off and nothing is checked. Bands already on dancer profiles stay, because they belong to the dancer and travel with them, but your event stops acting on them.