[Organizers] Lower attendance this year?

[Walker Sloan via Organizers]

In Concord MA Scout House Thursday Nights weekly, a lot of what were the 
younger "hot" dancers have gone over to various couples styles, such as 
West Coast Swing, and blues at Boston dance night clubs.

Someone asked about performers.  It seems to me that _any_ 
always-scheduled band, or "house" band, or house caller gets boring for 
both the dancers and the performers themselves.

It also seems to me that folks come for the band's excitement as much or 
more than for the dancing.  If the band is excited doing the tunes, the 
dancers are excited and have a really good time.

Parenthetical:  Music volume, and excitement.  One night I was organizer 
and sound engineer.  Kind of a ho hum dance.  At break, the band asked 
me to turn up the volume.  I did, and it was towards the top of my 
preference.  But the dancers...  Much higher energy, flourishes. 
Looking intently at each other.  Ear to ear grins.  _Totally_ different 
dance.  My experience.  YMMV

My impression is that the top tier national touring bands and callers 
bring in good crowds.  Every region has their favorites, which most 
organizers can name.

Blase dancers combined with market saturation?

It is also worth taking a census of your region.  In Massachusetts, we 
have two major regions of high dance activity.  First is eastern Mass, 
including Boston metro and Concord.  In western Mass, there is "the 
Valley", which is the Pioneer Valley of the Connecticut River. Will 
Loving of the Amherst Dance started holding a Challenging Dance on forth 
Fridays, along with his regular 3 or 4 Wednesday dances in Downtown 
Amherst.  Lisa Greenleaf runs a First Friday Challenging dance at Scout 
House in Concord MA.  When Will started up his Valley Challenging dance, 
there was a lot of discussion about the contra community benefits and 
hazards of putting on challenging dances.  I did a survey of both 
regions and found that eastern Mass had 19 contra dances a month, while 
western Mass had 17.  Each region has only a single Challenging dance 
per month.  Saturation?

https://www.jefftk.com/p/contra-heatmap and
http://www.trycontra.com/

were useful resources in this survey.

If possible, compare your regional dances now with how many there were 
10-20 years ago.

It is pretty telling when regions with few dances suffer the same 
declines as the hyper-dance regions.  That points more to fashion and 
fad and fading popularity.

Mac Sloan
Thursday Night Dance Committee, at the Concord Scout House



On 12/6/16 8:17, Marie-Michèle Fournier via Organizers wrote:
> Hi all,
>     Both Montreal and Ottawa have seen lower attendance this fall and we
> got word that it's similar in Brooklyn. Are any other local dances
> seeing this too? Any idea what might be causing this? Since it happens
> to both Canadian and American cities I doubt it's the political climate.
> Thanks,
> Marie
> ContraMontreal
>
>
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