[Organizers] Lower Attendance this year

[via Organizers]

Weighing in from Rochester NY here. (Speaking for myself, not on behalf of CDR)

Awesome question, Marie-Michèle Fournier! You can tell by the number of responses that everyone is thinking of this.

We have been tracking attendance for our weekly Thursday Night dance for nearly a decade. Review it every month at the planning committee meeting.
The series is 40 years old this year. 
About 4-5 years ago, we experienced our lowest chronic attendance for several months, down to 25-30 from about 50 attendees when going back 5-7 years.
We did a LOT of things to attract new folks: Posting flyers in coffee shops and Colleges, putting announcements in the local papers, bring a friend free campaigns.
We also initiated a "Second Dance Free" program, where every new dancer gets to come back a second time for free.
This forum would be a great place to catalog all the ways we as organizers have thought to promote our avocation (or vocation, as the case may be.)

To Mary Collins' point:
As the performer coordinator for the past 4 years, I did some trending based on which bands and callers drew the most and fewest folks for the past 10 years, from records the club kept.
(Dropping out extremes for weather and extenuating circumstances like competing performances, which were sometimes recorded on the sign-in sheet.)
I started booking the bands and callers that drew the crowds, and cut way back on the unpopular ones. With a weekly dance, there's lots of mixing of callers and bands, so teasing out the trends is doable.
For us, it was callers who called squares and circles and triple minors, or were pedantic and brusque on stage, who drew far less folks,
and the bands that play exclusively "Old Time Music" were the ones I had to cut back on. 
For the record, there is only one band that I had multiple request to NOT have them back, from discerning dancers.

 I actively sought out newer younger bands, particularly from a local String school. They tended to have LOTS of groupies who paid the young people rate, 
but the enthusiasm was contagious and frankly, the performers are exceptionally talented musicians.
The biggest boost was a successful 40th Anniversary dance, with members of the original band from 1976, and callers from the past 4 decades.
There were folks who came back for that dance we haven't seen in ages, and a few of them have begun to come once a month or so.

Our attendance at last count is now averaging up in the high 40's to 50's fairly regularly. When big names come, we hit about 90. Used to be upwards of 120 for the same bands.

Another consideration is the tireless efforts of the coordinators of our English Country Dance half of the organization.
They have truly grown about 3x-4x on a regular basis from humble starts. They have an annual Jane Austen Ball that is sold out a few days after announcing each year.
They have coordinated press releases for the Contra and English dance events. We have been on local news. We have been on Radio.
They instigated the Meet-Up which has brought us several new folks.
We have started having occasional (1-2 per year) Combo dances, just to get the people together...we needed to heal the schism in our group that created animosity on each side, mostly about funding.

A couple of our dancers also do MWSD, and have brought in one or two regulars from that group to ours.
I would like that cross-pollenation to continue, to help with the attendance on nights where squares are likely.
I won't prohibit them when booking, but suggest that they are not the crowd pleaser.

As for Weekends, yes, we have seen a decline over the last 7-8 years at our Thanksgiving Festival. We had to raise the price and I am concerned that we are almost out of the market space.
We are still tallying from last week's event. The hall raised the rates by nearly 200% in one year a few years back...and that is when we had to increase the price.
That dance used to be the money maker to fund the break-even or losing weekly dance. Now the weekly dance is self supporting, and covers any shortfall on the big dance weekend.
However, we did get a boost last year when I insisted that we try a Techno for half of one of the evening dances. It drew well. And there were the inevitable "too loud, too dark, too many flashing lights" 
from some traditional contra dancers, but the majority of dancers voted with their attendance. The performers who stayed with me this year were talking about how so many weekends are
making it difficult for any one weekend to draw too many people, and mentioned some areas of the US where there is a big weekend nearly Every weekend (hyperbole? not sure)

My own personal thought here: I wonder if the proliferation of the "Social Contracts" that dance organizations are publishing are having a negative effect on potential repeat dancers...
A few of the policies I have read make me thing "Why do I want to go where there is a NEED for this type of rule to be published?"
I understand and agree that the behaviors being spelled out are egregious, and outside the bounds of acceptable behavior,
and having a written policy helps enforcers do the undesirable task of addressing the situation.
I just don't know the answer to the conundrum. If only we could be sure people recognized how widespread the problem is, and that having a policy is a good thing.

My own fantasy is to fund a resurgence of Social dance through the high schools, by coordinating the music departments and the phys ed departments to replace the
recordings of scratchy records with unintelligible calls for the Dreaded Square Dance Unit. There are SO MANY great sets by newer bands that could be scored and charted for 
the HS jazz band and Wind ensembles to record for their classmates to use instead. It is my pipe dream, but like so may of those, I just don't have the time or resources.

yours in dance,

Bob Fabinski

 

 

bobfab at aol.com


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