Chrissy, Your points are indeed thought-provoking. It is kind of hard to detect why dances struggle (I don't like to use the word "fail") to generate a lot of dancers. Many dance series I have seen have actually started to gain dances. One time I called at Princeton, and Bob Isaacs told me that it went from a one-line dance to a three-line dance, and they did absolutely nothing to change their dance to cause this to happen. Other series, like the dance in Annapolis, went from a struggling dance to a thriving dance, due to a change in venue and a change in organizers (and thus perhaps a change in dance focus too).
To me, these struggling dances are part of my community, and I try to support them when I can. I realize that they may be local bands that aren't as "hot" as the national bands, and the dancers there generally are a lot of new-ish dancers to perpetual beginners. But the way that these dances get better is us, the community, support them. If we run a dance opposing another dance series, that alone can harm the other dance series. Most often it's a one-shot challenging dance that competes with a local series that sometimes attracts experienced dancers. I would venture a guess that challenging dances don't bring in very many new dances, and I worry that those experienced dancers that help these local dances go to the challenging dances, leaving the existing series with much fewer regular dancers that help the newbies there. Very infrequently do I see new dance series popping up to compete against existing series, and if they are they are either a) a different form of dance, like squares, or technos, or English, or family dances, or b) at least 90 minutes away so that it doesn't really draw from the same pool of dancers except the small subset that live equidistant from the two. Those things do more to raise the profile of dancing in the area and I consider that a good thing. Special "hot" dances that compete against the local series, I believe, tend to hurt the local series. Perry ________________________________ From: Chrissy Fowler <[email protected]> To: "[email protected]" <[email protected]> Sent: Thursday, May 1, 2014 10:00 AM Subject: [Organizers] to conflict or not to conflict? Thought-provoking feedback so far. A few devil's advocate points. (a) If it's the case of a dance that's already failing to thrive, then why should other organizers feel responsible for not conflicting? I mean, there must be reasons why it's failing to thrive. Perhaps it would be better in the long run to have that dance die altogether. (b) There are plenty of business models that use the cooperative model (versus cutthroat competitive). Still, I don't quite see the parallel in terms of not competing. I think starting a brand new series (which may or may not succeed, by the way!) in possible competition with an existing series is not at all like, for example, the cutthroat methods of Whole Foods moving in next door to the local food co-op (which had been thriving, but just can't compete with a giant like WF and subsequently goes belly up). (c) One could also say, if the new series does succeed and ends up bringing in lots of new dancers (as Jeff K pointed out), then it actually could improve the standing of the existing series. (By raising the profile of the dance form in the area, by having the existing series be an alternative to the new one, etc etc.) (d) If we want to mutually support other organizers, is "not-competing" the best way to do it? If we prop up a losing proposition, then what does that do for the organizing skills of those (possibly ineffective) dance organizers? Should we instead encourage (or, by competing, make it necessary for) them to re-think and re-envision their approach to improve their chances of success? For the sake of discussion, Chrissy Fowler "Dance, when you're broken open... dance, when you're perfectly free" ~ Rumi chrissyfowler.com belfastflyingshoes.org westbranchwords.com _______________________________________________ Organizers mailing list [email protected] http://www.sharedweight.net/mailman/listinfo/organizers
