Partnership Requests

Overview

Most competition events are partnered — you need a lead and a follow to enter together. This page explains how to form a partnership with another athlete, how requests work, and a couple of ways partnerships can be formed without a request at all.

Why You Need a Partnership

Signing up for an account automatically gives you the Athlete role, which lets you register for competitions right away. But for most events, registering alone isn't enough — you need a partner. The only events you can enter without one are TBA entries (see the TBA Entries guide), Solo events, which don't require a partner at all, and Formation/Team events, which can only be signed up via Studio Account.

To dance with someone in a partnered event, you and that person need a Partnership — and the normal way to create one is a Partnership Request.

Key Concepts

Sending a request

A Partnership Request is sent to someone by email — they must already have an account in the system. There's no way to invite someone who hasn't signed up yet; if you enter an email with no matching account, the request will fail.

When you send a request, you specify:

The recipient's email address (the one on their account)
Your role — Lead or Follow

You don't pick a role for the recipient — whichever role you choose, they're automatically on the other side of it.

Accepting or declining

The recipient sees the request in their partnership requests list and can accept or decline it. Only the recipient can respond — the sender just waits. Once a request has been responded to, it's locked and can't be changed again.

Accepting the request immediately creates the Partnership. There's no email notification for any of this — you'll need to check the app to see new requests, responses, or updates.

Partnerships are directional — role matters

A partnership is defined by both people and their roles. That means Alice (Lead) with Bob (Follow) and Bob (Lead) with Alice (Follow) are two different partnerships, and both can exist at the same time.

That said, most competitions don't allow the same two people to enter the same event twice, even with roles swapped — this "no double dipping" rule is on by default and blocks it regardless of which of you is lead or follow. An organizer can turn this restriction off for their competition if they want to allow the same person to dance with multiple partners in one event, but you should assume it's on unless you know otherwise.

Partnerships are permanent

Once a partnership is created — whether through a request, TBA matching, or a studio account (see below) — it cannot be deleted or dissolved. There's currently no way to remove a partnership through the app, so make sure you mean to pair with someone before accepting a request or sending one.

Sending a Partnership Request

Steps

Go to your Partnerships page.
Select New Request (or similar) to open the request form.
Enter the recipient's email address.
Select your role — Lead or Follow.
Submit.

Your request appears in your partnership requests list as pending until the recipient responds.

Responding to a Partnership Request

Steps

Go to your Partnership Requests page. Sent and received requests both appear in the same list — requests you've sent show as awaiting a response, and requests sent to you show Accept/Decline actions.
Review the request, then choose Accept or Decline.

Accepting creates the partnership right away; declining closes out the request with no further action needed.

Partnerships Formed Without a Request

Not every partnership goes through the request/accept flow. Two exceptions:

TBA matchmaking

If you enter a partnered event as TBA (to be announced) with a Lead, Follow, or Flex role instead of picking a partner, you're placed in a queue for that event. The organizer can pair you with another athlete in the queue whose role complements yours (a Flex entry can be matched to either side). When the organizer confirms a pairing, a partnership is formed automatically — no partnership request is involved. See the TBA Entries guide for more on how that queue works.

Studio/team accounts

If you're registered as a dancer under a studio (team) account, the studio owner can create partnerships freely among the dancers they manage, without sending partnership requests. This is meant for pairing the studio's own dancers with each other — if you're on a studio account and have questions about your partnerships, check with your studio.

Where to Find This

Athletes manage partnerships from the Partnerships page (view existing partnerships and start a new request) and the Partnership Requests page (respond to incoming requests, check the status of ones you've sent).