[Tango-L] Argentine Tango Dancer Census

[Tom Stermitz]

I think you are a bit random on your numbers and cities. 500 in New  
York?

Admittedly it is hard to define "passionate", vs regular vs newcomer  
vs got-a-new-boyfriend-who-doesn't-dance. It can't be too restrictive  
like "regularly attends festivals" or "multiple trips to Buenos  
Aires". There are a lot of people who do tango regularly as a past  
time, but not as a dedicated part of their life.

I used to keep a good mailing list and tracking in Denver, but now  
that there are so many others who teach, my stats aren't so complete.  
It used to have 300 regular dancers, 400 if you included those who  
came out less often.

A couple obvious things: there is a lot of churn in the newcomers;  
And, longer term dancers often reduce their attendance from 2-3 times  
per week to something more "reasonable" like 1-2 times per month.  
Also, a mature community gets a bit more spread out over all the  
different milongas by geography and time. You might think someone  
isn't coming anymore, but they have a different favorite milonga.


Maybe your benchmark city has the following pattern of milonga  
attendance:

DISTINCT ATTENDANCE:
100 Once or twice per week
200 Once per month
400 Once per six months

I think you can approximately double this to count group classes and  
privates.

Denver is a medium-sized city with a population of 3 million within a  
60 mile (100 km) radius).

So, if you compare Denver to the benchmark, we could ask whether it  
has 200 DIFFERENT people attending milongas, practicas or classes once  
or more per week. I think that is too low; I'd say 300-400 different  
people do one or more tango events per week. We have a lot of milongas  
and a lot of teachers, so it is hard to add up all the different  
places, and harder still to count distinct people.


TOTAL WEEKLY ATTENDANCE CALCULATION

Probably an easier calculation would be to simply add up the total  
attendance at all the milongas/practices or the classes per week.  
Separate out the newcomers left over from the beginner class, and just  
count just the paid attendance if you want. By that measure, Denver  
might have 400 dancers each week.

I think we have a classroom census almost as high (we have a lot of  
teachers, and a lot of classes per week, although attendance varies).



On Mar 5, 2008, at 2:02 PM, Alex wrote:

> If you narrow the search to people who are passionate about it,  
> perhaps
> obsessed by it, dance (or take classes) every week or at least once  
> or twice
> a month...
>
> I will start in the U.S...
>
> Take Denver...I would estimate 200-300 dancers there that fit this
> "passionate" category ...although this figure might be high...
>
> Let's use 200 for the "average" large city...
>
> Here's a rough table...
>
> Denver	200
> Seattle	500
> Portland	500
> San Francisco	500
> Los Angeles	200
> San Diego	100
> Phoenix/Tuscon	100
> Austin	50
> Dallas	50
> Houston	50
> Chicago	100
> St. Louis	50
> Baton Rouge/New Orleans	50
> Birmingham	50
> Atlanta	100
> Miami	200
> Ann Arbor	100
> New York	200
> Boston	200
> Small towns x 50 states	500
> "Passionate" Total	3800
> Round up....	5000