Nurturing a New Scene
Posted: Thu Feb 19, 2009 2:22 am
This has been on my mind for a while.
Some background:
We're a new scene, with two venues in neighbouring cities - one venue has been going for nearly a year, one for four months. There were very few experienced dancers in the area, so most of our dancers were new to Lindy when they came to us, and we've very much had to start from scratch.
Currently, each venue is getting around 40 customers - sometimes more, sometimes less, but on the whole, the numbers are slowly growing.
We run a fairly standard format of classes (beginner / bridging / intermediate) followed by 1 - 1 1/2 hours of social dancing.
Which brings me to the DJing side. I'm currently trying to accomplish two things:
1) Retain more people in the social dancing section. We have quite a high drop-off rate after the classes, especially in the newer venue where there are less confident dancers.
2) Gradually acclimatise people to dance to faster music. It's incredibly easy for me to fall into the trap of only playing music that's well within everyone's comfort zones - but there's also a lot of dangers in that which I don't think I need to spell out. Some of this is going to come down to the teaching, but the DJing clearly plays a huge role.
My normal pattern is to start with slower tracks, build in speed and energy to a peak (depending on how people are responding), then drop down to something slower, rinse and repeat. I've found that this works extremely well when DJing for a floor full of experienced dancers, but I've found it hard to tailor this to our weekly venues - I try gradually push people with the upper speeds, but it's not always successful.
This week I've been trying a different approach, which worked a lot better
1) Keep the energy high throughout. People are more inclined to leave during lulls.
2) Keep the song pattern less predictable.
3) From time to time, jump to a speed well above most people's comfort zones. Then drop back a bit to something that's still faster than people are used to, but which seems slow in comparison.
Anyway - the results were better - this week saw perhaps the best atmosphere to date, with more people staying a lot longer than normal - which is encouraging.
I'm curious to know how other people have tackled this one - any suggestions or ideas that could help with the process would be extremely welcome.
Some background:
We're a new scene, with two venues in neighbouring cities - one venue has been going for nearly a year, one for four months. There were very few experienced dancers in the area, so most of our dancers were new to Lindy when they came to us, and we've very much had to start from scratch.
Currently, each venue is getting around 40 customers - sometimes more, sometimes less, but on the whole, the numbers are slowly growing.
We run a fairly standard format of classes (beginner / bridging / intermediate) followed by 1 - 1 1/2 hours of social dancing.
Which brings me to the DJing side. I'm currently trying to accomplish two things:
1) Retain more people in the social dancing section. We have quite a high drop-off rate after the classes, especially in the newer venue where there are less confident dancers.
2) Gradually acclimatise people to dance to faster music. It's incredibly easy for me to fall into the trap of only playing music that's well within everyone's comfort zones - but there's also a lot of dangers in that which I don't think I need to spell out. Some of this is going to come down to the teaching, but the DJing clearly plays a huge role.
My normal pattern is to start with slower tracks, build in speed and energy to a peak (depending on how people are responding), then drop down to something slower, rinse and repeat. I've found that this works extremely well when DJing for a floor full of experienced dancers, but I've found it hard to tailor this to our weekly venues - I try gradually push people with the upper speeds, but it's not always successful.
This week I've been trying a different approach, which worked a lot better
1) Keep the energy high throughout. People are more inclined to leave during lulls.
2) Keep the song pattern less predictable.
3) From time to time, jump to a speed well above most people's comfort zones. Then drop back a bit to something that's still faster than people are used to, but which seems slow in comparison.
Anyway - the results were better - this week saw perhaps the best atmosphere to date, with more people staying a lot longer than normal - which is encouraging.
I'm curious to know how other people have tackled this one - any suggestions or ideas that could help with the process would be extremely welcome.