That is incredibly interesting to me. I know I go less to the Québécois folk dance because their price has increased again (from 17$ to 18$ !) and I'd been wondering if a sliding scale would help convince dancers with smaller budgets to come contra dancing.
Side note: that Québécois folk dance scene also seems to have lower attendance this year, although I've been there only once this fall so it's hard to tell for sure.

Any one frequents other types of dances (blues, swing, salsa, tango, etc) and can tell us if they have lower attendance too?

On Tue, Dec 6, 2016 at 2:07 PM, Donald Perley <donperley@gmail.com> wrote:
Market flexibility is a factor here. When we went from $8 to sliding
scale (pay what you can, 5 to 10), our average per dancer went down,
but enough more attendance that the total gate went up and we were
able to raise the minimum for our bands.



On Tue, Dec 6, 2016 at 10:24 AM, Perry Shafran via Organizers
<organizers@lists.sharedweight.net> wrote:

>
> Affordability of dances is another reason (as rents and costs of talent has
> gone up), and perhaps saturation of dances in any one region.
>
> Perry
>
>
> ________________________________
> From: Marie-Michèle Fournier via Organizers
> <organizers@lists.sharedweight.net>
> To: Shared Weight Organizers <Organizers@sharedweight.net>
> Sent: Tuesday, December 6, 2016 8:17 AM
> Subject: [Organizers] Lower attendance this year?
>
> 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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