Many community members have spoken up about wanting more opportunities for blues dance instruction and social dancing. Rather than throwing spaghetti at a wall and seeing what sticks, we wanted to collect some data, share that data, and focus efforts towards building things that make sense for our community. (Idea and general survey outline thanks to our friends in Colorado!)
Here are the results. (And my thoughts along the way)
Method
Online survey, spread via word of mouth and Facebook shares. Additional "pop-up" locations where the survey was announced during an event, a QR code was posted, and several people were encouraged to fill out the survey on-site.
Events where survey was announced and participants actively encouraged:
Sean Kravitz Slow Jazz Dance [SF]: 5/17
Twilight Blues [SF]: 5/18, 6/22
Blues Night @ The Starry Plough [East Bay]: 6/14
Wednesday Night Hop [South Bay]: Weekly in June
The Breakaway [East Bay]: Weekly in June
Facebook post sharing / word of mouth
Survey Opened: May 17, 2024
Survey Closed: June 30, 2024
Total Time Open: 45 days
Total Respondents: 89
There is, of course, clear bias to the respondents being somewhat sourced from lindy-focused events, and the survey being shared primarily by long-time dancers to other long-time dancers on Facebook... "The platform for parents," a friend's child remarked to me once and, well, they weren't wrong...
But on to results!
General Results
I know that the bay is essentially 3 dance scenes in a trench coat, but it's good to see a fairly evenly split between the 3 typical geographic locations among our respondents, plus a dedicated slice from the North Bay (For simplicity, Sacramento is grouped in North Bay, Santa Cruz is grouped with the South Bay). Surprised to see the significant representation from the South Bay in the survey despite the current lack of partnered blues dancing events currently running in the area.
Also impressed at the near even split between leads and follows among respondents and the growing slice of switch dancers! For the sake of this survey, I asked for primary role preferences as a proxy for class balance, meaning that even though I enjoy switch dances and am capable of leading, I consider myself primarily a follow and would mark myself as such.
Excited to see nearly a quarter of beginners taking the survey! The Pandemic has hit us hard and we've lost 3 years of beginners. The bulk of current dancers have been dancing for more than 5 years and rate themselves as advanced. Important information when considering class offerings.
The number of respondents that said they are not currently blues dancing tells me that the word of mouth/online reach was stronger than responses gathered at the monthly dances in SF and South Bay. I noticed later that just because someone is not currently attending blues dance classes, does not mean they do not want them. Roughly 65% of respondents that originally said they are not attending classes later added dance classes to their Wishlist. But I'm getting ahead of myself.
The above does not surprise me. What does surprise me is that only 5 respondents originally said they wanted choreography/performance classes, but 17 respondents later filled out the corresponding section. (I did try to make it clear that if you didn't click it as a Wishlist item that you did not need to fill out the section). You'll note similar instances of conflicting messages as we move along (e.g. 63 respondents wanted more dance classes, but 73 respondents filled out the next section). I'm conflicted for future survey iterations on whether anyone should be able to weigh in on sections they aren't explicitly invested in. More info is nice to aggregate opinions, but can also muddy the waters (ba-dum-tss).
Wishlist Item: Dance Classes & Practice Sessions
Looks like the winning combo right now would be weekly classes, preferably on partnered dancing covering deep dive topics. Workshops are also in demand. The demand seems to be for highly focused material and people are hungry to learn rather than casually picking things up.
Beginner/taster classes are a plenty in the Bay. Developing intermediate and advanced curriculum is definitely a topic that needs to be explored.
The question was a free-form answer box and the above is the parsed summary. I love all of you, even the ones that read the question too quickly and asked for non-local folks (to be fair, Grey leaving was not well advertised). This question was primarily to gauge who stands out in people's minds as excellent local instructors for organizers to be aware of. One explicit bias is that I taught on the days the survey was explicitly advertised at venues.
RIP Friday Night Blues. For anyone reading this thinking of starting a weekly venue. It's looking like Friday and Saturday night are prime choices, though they historically suffer high variability as other events / holiday schedules roll into view.
Pricing has long been a hotly debated topic. A 1 hour class with 4 hour social will easily cost over $800/night after accounting for venue costs, teachers, DJs, insurance, etc. At $15 a person, you'd need 54 people to show up just to break even. I highly support the NOTAFLOF model, but from experience, the assumption that organizers ought to donate hours of their life for the love of the dance is highly unsustainable. Here's hoping we can all strike a balance in our near future. I plan to continue collecting data on this moving forward, especially in regards to what people feel is fair to pay teachers, DJs, and staff.
It seems that the majority of respondents want to work in a guided group where they create their own goals, but have a trained instructor help them figure out how to meet those goals or offer drills and instruction. Of the people who said they were interested in self-guided groups, 90% said they were also interested in guided groups, as opposed to only 60% of people who wanted a guided group responding that they would be amenable to self-guided groups.
Wishlist Item: Socials & Community Outings
Parking is a huge incentive for at almost 62% of all respondents. When you break it down by region, only 30% of SF residents say that parking is a priority, but the East, South, and North bay all agree that it is a consideration for them. Interestingly enough, the roughly 60% number does not vary based on number of years respondents have been dancing.
To the person who specifically put down a boardgame/knitting circle night, we should be friends! (or maybe we already are???) It seems there is a large drive to see live music and find other partner dancers out in the wild. Figuring out a good way to facilitate this in the coming year would be excellent, especially as the costs for dance organizers is relatively low. I know of a few group chats where people will post that they're heading to a live music event. The challenge is how do people outside of the group find out? As a society we operate on circles of trust. Facebook was an excellent way of navigating through connecting people using those circles of trust -- that is until it became bogged down by ads and bots.
Wishlist Item: Choreography/ Performance Team
To be honest, I tossed this question in for funsies. I deeply enjoyed being part of the Sundown Strut team ages ago, and it seems there's current interest in some type of choreography/performance group (At least 19% of all respondents want something in this vein!). I'm really hoping someone sees this and feels inspired to start a group. It takes a village, after all!
Additional Notes from Respondents
Also known as, "A summary of all the free form responses sent in the "Any thing else"? box." The x# indicates number of respondents that asked for the exact same thing (includes additional requests). Additional request is when other respondents asked for something similar, but was more specific.
Requests for live music at Twilight Blues
Desire for more adv/adv+ classes (x5 respondents)
Additional request for out of town instructors
Additional request for leveled classes to work with those who’ve developed an understanding of frame and connection
Desire for mini-privates at dances (similar to Balhaus)
Desire for family friendly dance events (x2 respondents)
Needing a babysitter = $100+ for each night of dancing
Weekend mornings before naptime dance?
Dinner-time / Afternoon after naptime dance?
(Personal note: I’ve spoken with many parents and 7 or 8pm seems a common bedtime for young kiddos.)
Having a play/reading area for kiddos
Safety
Preference for venues having monitored parking lots or being in neighborhoods where it feels safe to walk alone at night
Buddy system to walk to/from car feels unsustainable due to time and availability factors
Covid concerns. Desire for Masking policies and improved ventilation practices (x2 respondents)
Dearth of partner dancing in Fremont, open niche?
Additional request for “something in the South Bay” (x2 respondents)
Desire for centralized place to learn about Blues Events (x2 respondents)
An additional, specific request to not organize things via facebook
Concern RE inclusion of POC in dance spaces and an urging for all, including organizers to prevent cliquish environments
Final Notes
If you've made it this far, thank you! Please enjoy these ducks!
My hope for the coming year is to see change within the current state questions and measure some real growth in our scene while making sure that we continue to address both the social and societal issues that impact our dance scene.
I'm also hopeful as various entities try and tackle the large desire for social dances and classes that the proportional desire for practice sessions and community outings will increase. What this survey shows me that there are passionate people who are interested in a variety of activities. No one solution will solve all out problems, but maybe a series of smaller efforts will. We just need to figure out how to make it happen and how to make it self-sustaining.
Personally, my list of items to tackle between now and next year will be:
Quarterly workshops
A centralized place where people can find out about happenings (classes, dances, live music events where other partner dancers are likely to be present, etc.)
A system for partner dancers to easily find each other in the wild
Continuing our monthly partnership with The Starry Plough and exploring other, similarly low-commitment partnerships in the area.
Stretch goals:
Setting up a system / venue for guided group practice sessions to group people with similar goals and learning styles.
Creating an "idiom" aka Partnered Blues Dance (and music) Styles reference page
But Jeannie! Didn't you say that one of the most desired thing were DJ's social dances on a more frequent cadence?? Yes, absolutely! And knowing myself, having been on staff and organizing boards for various dance venues over the years, I know that I do not have the capacity at this time to spearhead such an endeavor. BUT! I do hear whispers of others who may be ready to try such a thing. And when that is solidified and I'm told it will be a thing, I will absolutely promote the heck out of it.
One last note is that I still plan to breakdown all data by region. I tried to make a neat pivot table everyone could access before publishing this post, but because of the poor and surprisingly inconsistent choices GoogleForms decided to spit out the data in, the data still needs a lot of manual processing and conditioning to be useful. If you want the regional info sooner, please reach out because there's nothing more motivating than having someone else specifically ask things like, "What days and times work best for the intermediate-level dancers in the South Bay?" Also consider sending me a Ko-Fi (aka a boba) for my spreadsheet efforts!
Sincerely, your data loving dance geek,
-- Jeannie Tran
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