Questioning the quest for gold: after twenty-four years, Rhee Gold gets out of the competition business.

"American Dance Awards started small," remembers Rhee Gold about one of the first major dance competitions that grew into a giant in the field. And now, in spite of its success, he has just sold the family business.

In 1973, Sherry Gold was operating a dance school and a small showcase workshop from her Randolph, Massachusetts, basement. In 1979, Gold, and her dancing twin sons, Rhee and Rennie organized a competitive showcase to raise money for costumes for their performing company. It was such a success that it became the school's primary fund-raiser for the next three or four years. "There were very few competitions at that time," says Gold.

Rhee produced events in Portland and later in Pittsburgh. The Gold family had long been members of New England Dance Masters and the national Dance Masters of America, but Rhee says he was fired as a master teacher by the Pittsburgh DMA chapter because his competition was viewed as a "conflict of interest" with DMA.

"It was my first taste of political controversy," remembers the dark-haired, carefully groomed, now bespectacled leader. So the ever passionate and unquiet Mr. Gold went uninvited to the DMA board and apparently convinced the governing body that their interests were the same--motivating and enabling students to be better dancers and performers. (Gold later served as the youngest president of the New England Chapter of Dance Masters, subsequently as president of the national DMA, and was founder of UNITY, an organization of dance teaching entities.)

During 1985-85 Rhee borrowed $30,000 to catch the wave of enthusiasm for dance competitions and take ADA, then known as American Dance Spectrum, on tour to ten cities. It ran in only eight that first year, with national finals in Boston. "We had only 240 entries there, and so [to fill the day] we threw in three free classes in the afternoon. After that, we added a couple of cities [to the tour] every year."

Success has been a bumpy road. In 1994, Sherry Gold achieved her lifelong dream of owning her own full-service dance studio. She also was diagnosed with terminal lung cancer. Rhee moved his American Dance Awards office into the studio and continued to teach classes there. Shortly after Sherry's death, the bank called the mortgage due, but Rhee says he scraped together every penny and saved the school. Then the Hilton Hotel chain placed a lien on the school in a $370,000 dispute between ADA and Hilton Disney World over the block booking of hotel rooms for competition participants.

"It was the year my morn was dying," Rhee remembers, "and I had to fight everything, but this was the last straw. This meant fight." After two years, the case was settled in favor of ADA.

"That [arbitration] changed our whole way of doing business, though. We formed [an additional] company, Celebrity Travel, and from then on became our own booking agent for [hotel] room blocks," says Rhee. "We took back that control."

Meanwhile Rennie, who had been choreographing for Disney World, decided to return to Massachusetts and bought the family studio from Rhee, who continued to teach there.

By 1999, ADA's twentieth-anniversary year, Rhee says he had begun to think of stepping away. "I was burned out," he says. "I had become a businessman with so many responsibilities that I forgot to take care of myself. It was more than twenty-four hours a day. Seven days before one event I was in the hospital, with a 104-degree fever. I left the hospital to go to the event. Fortunately, Gloria Jean [Cuming, who on August 31, 2003, became owner and director of ADA] had been working with me on ADA, and after that she bought in." The partnership and some time off infused Gold with more energy. "Together we established the Canadian tour, adding cities--up to forty-five cities, fourteen in Canada--and started North American Dance Championships.

"This year, ADA's twenty fourth," states Gold proudly, "the New York City finals had 1,800-plus entries, with more than 4,000 people attending, and 70-plus classes--which are still free, because that's the way the Golds started."

So why, after a record-breaking year, has Rhee Gold sold the business? Well, everything except Project Motivate, Gold's series of seminars to reinvigorate working dance teachers.

"[It's because] it's all changed," realizes Gold. "My mother's generation was all about getting to be a better dancer and being the best choreographer you could be. Now we are a society that has to win. The original concept was about education, motivation, judging against standards, providing critique tapes so teachers and students could be instructed on how to improve. Now judges must 'provide positive reinforcement.' Parents feel deficient if the kid isn't a winner, and make the child feel somehow less if they don't win. And teachers now do the same thing. Kids are often happy even if just their name is called, or they get a certificate, or a bronze medal." Gold wanders off into telling a poignant example of a joyous child so quickly tearful at the reaction of parent and teacher. "The child sees that he is a disappointment if he doesn't get a gold--or now super gold or platinum--medal or trophy. And if one competition doesn't give them [a medal], they just go to another that will. There's been an erosion of standards. It doesn't seem to be about education anymore. Today no one leaves without a medal, no matter what.

"The bigger problem is that you can't make it in the dance world on trophies; it takes discipline, commitment, and passion. [When] we cheat the kids of that knowledge, we fool them into thinking they can win without those things," Gold asserts. "Teachers need to recognize the impact they have on students' lives."

The abdicating head of ADA endorses his former partner. "I wish Gloria Jean the best of everything. I worry that I won't be there to protect the reputation of the [competition's] name, but Gloria Jean must compete in a new world, and in her own style. She'll maintain it as best she can.

"For myself, I'm not scared. Now I take the experience of all those years and go forward with it to whatever, now that I'm not held back by business commitments. The keys to success are the same: reputation, integrity, fairness, honesty--the money will come. I need to do things that are my own. Polish my uniqueness. And, of course, there's Project Motivate, where I really want to spend more time.

"Last week I went back into the studio and choreographed for the first time in three years. It felt so good; I want to get back into my body, into movement, and in better shape. I won't leave dance, but I can lose myself for two or three days writing. I get the same feeling from that as I used to get from choreography."

For more information on American Dance Awards, log on to www.american danceawards.com. For Project Motivate, see www.projectmotivate.com.

K.C. Patrick spent a sunny Sunday, afternoon interviewing Rhee Gold just before he passed the ownership of American Dance Awards to Gloria Jean Cuming.