Comment by bradlys | Hacker News Reader

Comment by bradlys | Hacker News Reader

It's unfortunate that these articles and discussions written by Americans about the dance are mostly going to be lost to the ether in the next ten years. As this dance and some others are mostly on their last breath in the US. Pre-covid things had slowed down a lot but covid killed almost every college dance club out there. It's uncommon to see anyone under 25 at these dances. The cost of dances/events skyrocketed as well. Young people who had no money were the life blood of any scene - the future organizers, instructors, DJs, and so on. It was rare to see people who started after 30 becoming organizers. Now, it's harder to even see people under 30 at a dance in the US and most organizers/DJs/teachers started over ten or even twenty years ago. It looks like there are more people who used to dance than future dancers.

I'm not optimistic about the future of social dancing and that's why I've mostly given up on it after 15 years and doing 10 different styles.

There was one swing dance revival already, no reason there couldn't be another one. There's so much more information online about it now then people had when trying to reconstruct the dance style in the 90's as well, so even if it does die in our lifetime maybe there will be a 2120's swing dance revival as well. :)

For me at least, I took around 2 years of swing dance lessons (1~2 a month). It was HARD, at least for me. It didn't take that long to get through the basics but I never got confident at it and always felt unwelcome at dance events where everyone only wants to dance with already skilled dancers. The only exception was beginner parts of dance events where the participants have no experience.

I also found east coast swing to be very counter intuitive. 6 count on 4 count songs. Ugh! I picked it up but still....

Maybe it's unrealistic expectations from movies or something but basically, before taking the classes I thought social dancing would come kind of naturally with just a little instruction. Instead it turned out, again, at least for me, that it's a highly skilled activity and only others who've spent months training can participate.

To put it another way, I thought a random skilled lead dancer could pick a random partner and guide them through some moves. I felt like I've seen that from salsa leads. But, charleston and 6 count east coast swing are not intuitive and require practice beforehand, AFAICT.

You're right. It is very hard for men/leads. Most follows/women I know are incredibly judgy and won't dance with new leads. This is a big difference from a decade ago when saying "yes" was the norm. This is also a reason why I think it's falling off. Social dancing used to have a strong emphasis on the "social" part. It often now is completely organized around the actual dancing - not socializing. Socializing is a nice secondary effect whereas it was the primary effect before.

I have a lot of thoughts about dancing overall since I spent so much time doing it from organizing, DJing, teaching, and traveling the world for it. In general, I'd say dancing sucks in the US. It's not a welcoming atmosphere for men/leads anymore.

With the rise of dating apps, I don't see a reason to go out dancing for most men. Yeah, apps are terrible but very few women who go out dancing are of typical dating age and, more importantly, single. Most women who go out are in a relationship whereas most men who go out are single. I've done a lot of polling - the ratio is bonkers in the US. Relatively few men who are in relationships continue to dance once partnered. You will have as much competition at a social dance as you will on a dating app. I'd branch out.

Is that local to some regions? I've only seen an increase in weekly dancers in Australia and they're joining as young as always.

"US" - other parts of the world are doing okay with social dancing.

I'm sure it varies by dance and region, but at least in the Northeast the contra community is doing well! Lots of new dances, lots of people of all ages, and the group I help organize is well above our pre-pandemic attendance.

Eh. I'm in a large US metro area and one of our local dances recently had to put a cap on class sizes because it was getting too crowded. The local university club recently started back up after a post-pandemic hiatus. I'm considered one of the oldest at one dance I attend (I'm in my early thirties with some greys). The local yearly convention is back to pre-pandemic size

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