I'm coming in late to this discussion with a thought from the Form the Ocean dance weekend in 2019. They held a community discussion at that weekend structured around the idea of starting
at "Point D." As in, with big conversations in our communities, we so often churn round and round on points A, B, C: "how do we get more diversity?? we're so [white/old/middle class/etc]! but we need diversity!"
What if, instead, we started at point D and bypassed those first few questions that we always start with?
I would suggest that Point D for this conversation about young dancers might be:
"Our dance *already has* age diversity. How shall we be with the people already in the room?"
rather than scrambling to say "we need morrrrrrrrre young dancers!"
I'm 36, an in-between sort of age in the contra dance world. I started dancing 19 years ago, when I was 17. I absolutely started dancing because it was a place to hang out with my friends.
And, I could tell which adults would talk to me like I was a fellow dancer, and which ones talked to me like I was a Young Person. I still have friendships with the ones who treated me like a person to this day.
Get to know your young dancers like you would get to know anyone else you don't know yet! Don't be overbearing! Be friendly, ask them to dance, learn about their lives, but also leave
them alone to do their own thing and hang with their friends. Treat them like humans and not A Class of People We Need for Diversity. People can tell when they're being tokenized.
(My friend group and I had an experience about 4-5 years ago at our local English dance where the dance organizers/regulars practically *pounced* on us as we walked in the door and
were like "wow! young people! so nice to have young people! can we give you a discount? will you come back again? will you bring your friends?" and we were like "...um we're just here to English dance?" It was very off-putting and made us LESS likely to come
back again!)
I also have lots of thoughts about fostering a culture of consent, non-gendered role terms, young people on your organizing committee, etc, but I'll save them for another day!
Thanks,
Dana