What!?

It might be an unwritten law of courtesy....I am familiar with non-competition clauses in contracts that stipulate that sort of thing.

Hi Karen:

Seems odd that the Texas legislature would waste their time on passing a law regulating who can teach dance where....all businesses in the same field from astrology to zoological gardens compete for the same client base.....

The best place for you to find out would be to Google 'Texas Statutes' or 'Texas Rules' , or 'Texas Commerce and Licensing' (rules and statute are different forms of State law).

If there's nothing in Statute or Rule, check your local County and city ordinance.

Good luck, let us know what you find out.

Shimmies,
Amina in Mpls.

Not a law... but sometimes written into a contract for a particular space, which can have the consequences of legal action if the contract is broken. For example: In some strip centers where multiple dance studios exist, there may be contractual clauses required by the lessor that keep the businesses from overlapping, but if the law you mentioned was the reality, most dance studios would never be able to stay in business!

You can go within a 10 mile radius in Houston and learn ballroom, C&W or ballet in a large number of studios. :-) Zahirah Noor has independent ballroom teachers that teach classes at her location, and within 25 miles at another, because a lot of students simply don't want to drive more than 5 or 10 miles to a class.

If you think about the way Houston is laid out... Sirrom, Zahirah Noor, Danmar, Hope Stone, NIA Moves, Barnevelder, the Yoga Studios where Aisa, Farida and Belladonna teach (or have taught), colleges (St. Thomas, U of H, Kingwood, HCC), West U center.... are within a 25 mile radius of at least one other location. Now look at Aisa, Me, Sahira, Farida, Belladonna, and others... we have taught in multiple locations - sometimes within 10 miles of each other. And the saturation in Austin is at least double what it is in Houston, in a smaller city!

No class will be exactly the same, even with the same instructor in different areas... what I teach on the West side is not going to be what I teach at Hope Stone, because I have a different curriculum. And even if I did - the dance vocabulary for Oriental or Tribal just isn't that big - the foundation is the same, no matter how it's presented.

Competition is what it is.. there is a difference between courtesy and law. :-) As long as you are ethical in your business practice (not purposefully soliciting students currently enrolled with other teachers) you have nothing to worry about. Even in instances where instructors have not acted ethically, it's not against the law - it just gives them a bad reputation, and makes people not want to work with them anymore.

It's about supply and demand, based on convenience for the student - if there are students in an area that aren't going to drive beyond a certain point, you're not competing for the same client base, because they'd never drive to the other location. Even though I'm within 25 miles of Sirrom, students that live in Montrose aren't going to come out West... they're going to choose between Sirrom, NIA Moves, the yoga studios, etc... Now, I wouldn't go open a studio next door to Sirrom, Danmar or Zahirah Noor- that would just be idiotic from a business perspective. (I'm not leaving Chanson De Vie out purposefully - they're just pretty far outside of Houston and don't enter into the mix of your question.)

The only time this is different is when a student wants to study with a very specific teacher, in which case location doesn't matter... the student will travel as far as necessary to get to that teacher.

Hope that helps. :-)