Ballroom is hot

wyllo

wyllo

New Member
The college team I am involved with held its first lesson for the semester last night and we were overrun with potential members. A typical good first night for us is 50 new potential members -- last night we had 150-200 show up (counting was hard, they wouldn't stand still)!

An entire male floor of a dorm room even came together as an outing.

I know that the majority of people who came will not join, but that is an unbelievable increase in people interested in learning more about ballroom dance. Students who had a table at a student organization fair yesterday afternoon said we easily had one of the most popular tables.
 
Excellent! Here in Massachusetts, our local ABDA association is starting a pilot program for highschools. I am hoping to get involved in some way. It's really encouraging.
 
Still new to this, I love it so much, I'm drafting a pitch to my son's elementary and middle schools (ages about 8 and up). My son and his friend like to come over when I'm practicing and make up their own routines, so I thought that this might be a good time to give them some basics. I figure it can only help him when it comes to school dances and proms to know a little about how to ask a lady and have a comfort level with some of the more social dances. I've pitched this already to my instructor, and need to decide how and when to set up something on an introductory level with the kids (I'll coordinate, not teach). Is this too early to start? Any pointers?
 
wyllo said:
The college team I am involved with held its first lesson for the semester last night and we were overrun with potential members. A typical good first night for us is 50 new potential members -- last night we had 150-200 show up (counting was hard, they wouldn't stand still)!

An entire male floor of a dorm room even came together as an outing.

I know that the majority of people who came will not join, but that is an unbelievable increase in people interested in learning more about ballroom dance. Students who had a table at a student organization fair yesterday afternoon said we easily had one of the most popular tables.
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This is awesome! I wish ballroom had been organized where/when I was at college. My brother attended Brown (some 20 years ago) and I just linked to their swing site from another discussion board... I had no idea this was in place. What a perfect audience for ballroom! I'll be curious to see how many continue to attend at week 2 & 3.
 
rhythm mouse said:
I'll be curious to see how many continue to attend at week 2 & 3.
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I think we'll be lucky if we get 50 new members. There are several other ballroom organizations on campus -- including one that offers weekly social dances with a low membership fee. Our organization does weekly lessons and because of that is more expensive to join. But 50 members would double our current membership, so that would be a huge success.

We also had a large number of people who came to class ask questions about competiting and most were along the lines of "when can I start?"! :D
 
Great to see such interest. The universities here have clubs, but don't know if they have formed teams.

Wyllo, is this the University of Wisconsin?
 
Probably well before my time here - I've only been in Madison for 3 years. I hear its always had a fairly vibrant dance community for the Midwest.
 
wyllo said:
An entire male floor of a dorm room even came together as an outing.
Click to expand...

The problem we had at the UNC ballroom club was that one week, a bunch of frat boys would come, and we'd have a lot of extra leads. They'd get disgusted and not return - but the next week, having heard about it, a bunch of sorority girls would show up. Lather, rinse, repeat for about 6 weeks until attendance settled down :-)
 
Our registration forms have a few questions about how people found out about ballroom, so I'm really interested to see what people say. I bet there will be more than one reference to Dancing with the Stars. :D

Although the No. 1 reason people join our team (historically) is not to learn to dance, but to meet new people.
 
The response you got sounds excellent! We've usually found here (Oxford, UK) that a lot of people who try it will stay, even if they only came "for a laugh" at the start. Also, it's a self-perpetuating thing, once you have more people it gets more fun for everybody, and word-of-mouth will lead to more interest. We usually put up more posters for the new term after Christmas, and often get 100+ new members, usually because they heard from their friends who joined at the start of the year...

If you want to see what unis elsewhere get up to, have a look at the UK site ( www.universitydancesport.com/ ) which has quite a lot of information about what different unis have done. Or have a look at the clubs own websites, i.e. http://www.oudancesport.co.uk http://www.cam.ac.uk/societies/cdc/ http://www.union.ic.ac.uk/rcc/dance/ and many more...

Some of it may be useful if you become a "bigger" club, i.e. structure of classes, advertising, etc. etc. good luck with it all!!!
 
wyllo said:
The college team I am involved with held its first lesson for the semester last night and we were overrun with potential members. A typical good first night for us is 50 new potential members -- last night we had 150-200 show up (counting was hard, they wouldn't stand still)!
Click to expand...

We had similar numbers at NC State last Wednesday! :) We even got about 100 interested in joining our newcomer team!!! Exciting times.
 
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