> I can't talk while I dance as I need to concentrate on getting the moves right (it's a well known style of dance, not just club dancing)
I recognize that feeling! It took me a long time before it disappeared. Practice helps a lot. And if you forget a move, it's okay to get back to the basic (assuming you are doing a partner dance and not a line dance - I suck at line dances).
I don't know which style of dance you mean. You may consider different dance styles.
I did a bit of ballroom in grad school, then years later learned salsa, then added tango, then some swing and other dance styles (modern, Scottish country, Swedish folk dance).
Each one has a different social scene. Where I lived, tango tends towards older people, and is usually combined with a social/café scene (a milonga). "Older" means 40s and up.
Salsa is more at clubs. As a bouncer once pointed out, he loved the energy of the dancers, but they don't drink much so it doesn't make much revenue for the bar.
It took a couple of years of salsa classes, and dancing salsa elsewhere, before I realized that I didn't like the salsa style my teacher taught, and preferred another studio. So that's also something to consider.
Swing tended to be a younger, more energetic crowd (late teens/20s), with dance events at more specialized locales that had more open space (where I was, that was generally a yoga/dance studio or the OddFellows Hall, which hosted a lot of smaller dance events).
My limited ballroom experience was that the higher levels tend towards ballroom studios. I got the feeling that engineers lean towards ballroom because there are more specific steps and progressions to learn.
The folk dancing scene is pretty laid back. The basics aren't hard to learn, and people will help you with them. It's the most family-friendly of the dances I did, with quieter music, and more often held outside (if the weather is good) because it doesn't need a special dance floor.
For what it's worth, at my peak I was dancing about 25 hours per week. I met my wife at a dance event, held at bar.
Other things I did, to meet people, were local community college classes (as a new resident to the state, I like the local state history course the best; the teacher also hosted a monthly local history event, which I went to - nearly everyone was 55 and older so I was the youngest by far) and Sierra Club hikes.