Joining the webring…

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Found this on array, via some others:Grim Reaper’s Age Guesser. I’m 50, it guessed 49. Pretty close…

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Only seven dancers showed up at the Palo Duro Senior Center this afternoon. The rumor is that one couple (who showed up a couple of times recently) is driving others away. Not because they’re obnoxious or anything like that…it’s just that they no longer can move at even the relatively slow pace that I call there. They clearly enjoy dancing, but they’re apparently ruining it for the others.

Wish I knew what to do about it. I hate to tell people that they’re not welcome. I hate to see the group dwindle to oblivion because one couple is ruining the dancing for others. But if every tip becomes an exercise in frustration…

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Marketing:

I know CALLERLAB’s going to come up with some big plan, but that’s going to take a while, and we’re still faced with the fact that square dancing is definitely a low-budget activity. So I’m going to be looking around for net resources and info on PR and marketing for community-based organizations.

Marketing Strategies for Community-Based Language Programs

I’m also interested in marketing for callers. This site is more relevant for marketing an individual business: BizBasics

Do modern western square dancers seem pretty parochial about dancing? Seems like most square dancers to squares and (maybe) rounds, and that’s it. And even square dancers who do contras seem to want to do them in a “club” contra context (complete with dress code and canned music). Seems to me that we could (a) learn from other dance forms and (b) maybe work together to interest more people in dancing.

Last fall, there was a discussion on rec.folk-dancing on recruiting new dancers for contra dance series. They’re facing some of the same issues that MWSD is: aging dancers (theirs seem to be about 20 years younger than MWSD, but they’re still having a tough time attracting younger people), difficulty in retaining people once they get them through the door, difficulty in integrating new and experienced dancers.

Deja.com: How to attract people to dances: This is a long, wide-ranging discussion, some of which relates back to the original post on recruiting younger dancers into traditional and English Country Dancing.

Deja.com: Building Up a Folkdance Group: This discussion relates to recruiting for an international folk dance group.

Deja.com: Starting new dance — “advice” sought: An older discussion on starting a new dance series (in MWSD terms, a new club). It branches off into dancing with same gender (a relevant discussion for a current thread in the square dancing mailing list).

Deja.com: Square Dancing First Observations: A thread on MWSD from contra dancers’ points of view. It’s always useful to see ourselves as others see us.

Deja.com: How Well Does a Western Square Dancer Fit Into Your Dances?: Contra dancing explained for the MWSDer.

Deja.com: Square Dancing: The official “National Folk Dance”, Good or Bad Idea: A thread related to one of yesterday’s topics.

Contra and traditional dancers work hard at keeping their dances accessible to new dancers. But even within that community, there are dancers who’d like more of a challenge. And some see that as a threat to contra dancing, leading it to the slippery slope down which MWSD has already plummeted: Open Letter to Zesty Contra Organizers

Chris Kermiet, the author of the previous piece, has also written Building a Dance Community. Even though the contra community is different from the MWSD community, community-building is still important.

Is International Folk Dance Dead?: This collection of postings to rec.folk-dancing looks at the growth in complexity of modern international folkdancing (my first dance love, btw) and the resulting loss of accessibility to new dancers.

I think all modern western square dancers should read Julie Mangin’s articles on MWSDers’ attempts to get square dancing declared the national or state folk dance: Thoughts on Square Dancing and The State Folk Dance Conspiracy.

I love modern square dancing. I also like to folk dance, contra dance, two-step, polka, waltz…in other words, I like to dance, period. If a state wants to have a state folk dance (in New Mexico, we have a state question, “Red or Green?”), I think the dance should be related to the heritage of the individual state…not some over-legislated pseudo-folk dance like modern western square dancing. If New Mexico had a state folk dance (it doesn’t), it should be something Hispanic or Native American…something that would reflect what is unique about New Mexico. Maybe modern square dancing is an appropriate state folk dance for Colorado, where Pappy Shaw started the performing group that was a catalyst in the modern square dancing revival. But not for every state!

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Can’t get enough of the dancing hamsters? Want more totally bandwidth-wasting silly sites? Try DanceRing. I don’t get it, myself.

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Another place to get listed: 4dance. A couple of square dance related sites have found it and are listed there: American Square Dance and Ask Dave. The disadvantage is your site is displayed framed by the 4anything advertising.

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What’s a weblog? Here’s Jon Katz’ writeup in Slashdot. I found myself attracted to the genre almost immediately upon encountering it, unlike Derek Powazek, who resisted, but then came around. Here’s another piece on weblogging by Cameron of Camworld, a blog that I check pretty regularly.

So what I’m trying here is a blog for a micromarket. In another rant, Camworld says:

Every industry in the world has a potential need for a quality weblog or two. It’s safe to say that the Macintosh community has been inundated with Mac-centric news sites for several years now. So many, that I’ve lost count. But what about a weblog for the homemaker? Or the thousands of hot rod enhusiasts? Or the ham radio hobbyists? These are called niche market portals, and every one of them (and thousands of other niche markets) could be a potential source of quality information for someone.

And, who knows…maybe someone will become interested in our little microworld of dancing in squares through some link that they happen upon.

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Who got the hyphens?

Looks like one company, McBride Computer Services, grabbed up almost all the hyphenated square-dance domains:

• square-dance.org
• square-dance.net
• square-dancing.com, .net, and .org

square-dance.com goes to a site that’s currently closed for maintenance.

Back to McBride…they’ll sell you a subdomain and 40MB of space for a mere $149/year. That’s one way to get a square dancing related URL.

Quote for the day: “We should consider every day lost in which we do not Dance at least once” – Nietzsche

This was almost a lost day, but I did dance a few steps in the callers seminar (but is it really dancing when there’s no music?).

Here’s a source for new singing call ideas: Worst Country Song Titles. How ’bout it?

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Seems like there are a lot of caller databases out there, and I suppose that one needs to be listed in all of them, although my guess is that they’ll shake out to two or three that folks will automatically check first.

So here are the ones that I know about:

• Caller and Cuer Database: No need to send email; you can add and edit your own record at any time. You can also perform searches: show me all the callers with websites who live in New Mexico and call C2 (it’s just me…). This site also includes pictures.
• Dosado: So far, Bill’s just collecting info (using HTML forms…no need to send email). Don’t know what form the listings are going to take. My guess is it’ll be a database of some sort; whether it’ll be as sophisticated as Vic’s remains to be seen.
• Dave Gipson’s Internet Listing of Square Dance Callers: Looks like Dave’s updated his listing service so that one can fill out a form rather than sending him email. No searches on the database, though; it’s strictly a listing. Although you can get a listing of just the callers with websites, so there’s probably some kind of database engine running behind the scenes.
• SquareDancing.com’s Caller Database: This is a real searchable database; anyone can search it, but one has to join to enter or modify a record. Interestingly, one’s “membership” to the forums on this site is separate from one’s “membership” for database purposes, although I was able to set up the same username and password for both (whew! one less thing to remember…)
• CircleLeft: Somehow, fifty callers managed to get listed here. I haven’t been able to get a response to my email, so I’m not. It’s a listing, not (as far as I can tell) a database. Actually, the more I look at it, the more I think it’s real old. It’s got URLs and email addresses for some callers that I know are way out of date. Anyone know how long it’s been around and how long since it’s been updated?

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Jerry Jestin (no web site yet, but he says he’ll set one up any day now) was in Albuquerque this weekend. We kept him busy, with an ACES A2 dance Friday night, an afternoon dance for the Wilde Bunch on Saturday, an Allemanders Plus dance Saturday night and a (finally, something relevant) callers seminar for our local callers association on Sunday. He did a great job; we talked about working into different, but not hard, choreography, his use of music, and a lot of other stuff. I think all the callers there (ranging from 0 to 65 years of experience) got something out of it.

Square-Dance is under construction. Squaredancing.com’s forums are moribund. CircleLeft seems to be totally inactive…I emailed a request to be included in the caller list, but have heard nothing and haven’t been added.

We got home in time tonight to watch a little of the ballroom dance competition on PBS…quite a show. Question: does watching spectacular dancing like this inspire people to get out and try ballroom dancing? Or are the only people watching those who are already interested in dancing?

I also noticed that the local station’s presentation was partially funded by the local ballroom dance club…so if viewers decided that they wanted to try to learn some ballroom dancing, the info was right there.

T-Shirt I like: What if the hokey pokey is what it’s all about?

Community: Actually, I think community is what it’s all about and I think people may start looking for some real face-to-face people contact after they spend hours interacting via their computers. A New York Times article (I found it on Scripting News discusses a new survey on the impact of the internet. I love the ‘net and I definitely think communities do develop through online interaction. But I think people need hugs too. Real physical ones, not the virtual ones offered by a zillion over-sappy websites.

Dancing (almost any kind, not just square dancing) offers friendly physical contact. Not to mention a chance to get out of one’s chair in front of the computer and move around a little.

“To live is to dance, to dance is to live.” Who said that? I always thought it was Charles Schultz via Snoopy, but several dance quote pages attribute it to someone named Heidi Groskreutz.

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Can a website sell square dancing? Here’s a success story: Jeff Gorbutt, a caller in Australia, received an enquiry about learning to square dance from someone in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. I’ve been to Jeff’s site, and I thought it had some effective features, including a good explanation of why we call it “modern” square dancing. Now I wonder how someone in Milwaukee happened upon it?

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SquareDancing.com has put up a whole bunch of message forums on their site.

I wonder why someone would choose to discuss things there and not on the mailing lists that already have a lively discussion. One difference is that they’ve made the caller forums private, meaning that one has to say one is a caller to get access. Would we discuss things differently if we knew dancers weren’t listening in?

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Trains of thought derailed by the web

In sd-callers today, Guy Adams opined that we should stop saying (or even thinking) negative things about square dancing. He said “Begin today by saying, “Square Dancing is the #1 family activity for the New Millennium.”  Say this out loud, say it everyday and say it like you mean it.”

So this made me think of “Every day, in every way, I am getting better and better,” but I couldn’t remember who said it. Off to a search engine, where I quickly discovered that Emile Coue said it originally and that the phrase is used in a lot of affirmation-related sites.

Then I wondered about another phrase Guy used: “Call things that are not as if they were.” Turns out to be from a Matthew Henry commentary on Hebrews 11. (If you’re really interested, it’s here.)

Another phrase Guy used: “If you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all.” Yup, my mom used to say that one. But then I thought about “If you can’t say anything nice, come sit by me.” Now who said that? I thought it was Mae West or Dorothy Parker, but it turns out to be the Shirley MacLaine character in “Steel Magnolias”.

So obviously, I got derailed from Guy’s overall message. I actually tend to agree that thinking positively is a good thing, and that we can get bogged down in circular negative arguments. On the other hand, I don’t think we can ignore the ways in which square dancing, as it’s currently practiced, is a little out of touch with the times. (To carry that to an extreme, even the most positive salesperson couldn’t be successful selling slide rules, once calculators were invented.)