[Organizers] Lower attendance this year?

Heitzso heitzso at growthmodels.com
Tue Feb 27 12:49:38 PST 2018


If I'm reading this correctly, I'd like to note that "zesty" versus 
"community" is not determined by geography, i.e. rural versus urban, but 
rather one of the culture that's been 
available/created/nourished/stumbled-upon.

In my region you have Harvest Moon that runs both the River Falls dance 
out in the absolute middle of nowhere (15 minutes up a draw once you get 
off the highway, most urban areas are 35+ minutes away)
and the Landmark Hall dance smack dab in an urban area (suburb of 
Greenville). The River Falls dance's dominant demographic is under 25 
and their regular weekly dance is packed insane crazy fun.
         https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NJWOcdW47bc   (dozens of River 
Falls contra dance videos on YouTube)
The Landmark Hall dance is a pleasant mixed age dance that's age biased 
older and is closer to what I would call a "community" dance.
         https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rutRApUMsXc

The St. Louis contra dance in Webster Grove, Childgrove, is nestled deep 
in an large city yet biases towards the comfort of a "community" dance 
versus a yell-and-scream-with-Great-Bear weekend dance.

Point I'm making is it's not entirely about geography.

Heitzso

> A belated follow-up to Chrissy's "subtle point": I don't agree that it 
> is subtle - I think the culture of a contra dance in a rural area is 
> fundamentally different than a "zesty modern urban" contra dance. We 
> were discussing this on the way home after the Flurry, and I truly 
> value both.
>
> I used to live in an area where I could get to both types of dances 
> (roughly halfway between Philly and Baltimore). I could get to one of 
> the weekly urban dances on a weeknight and then a community oriented 
> dance on the weekend. Now that I live halfway up the coast of Maine I 
> don't get the joy of the zesty urban dances I used to enjoy. I do 
> still get the joy of the community dances, and I am glad that the 
> Belfast contra dance has become such an important social setting for 
> our many young attenders. The strong sense of community is wonderful, 
> but the fun dance experiences for me are now the occasional festivals 
> I can get to.



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