[Squaredancing] The 57th NSDC is now history

[Ken Robinson]

At 12:09 AM 6/29/2008, Heinz D. Trost wrote:
>Ken et al,
>
>thank you for the data.
>
> >The 57th National Square Dance Convention is now history. The final
> >total attendance number that I saw was 6,025. :-(  They had projected 7,000.
> >
> >
> >
>well, square dancing is still dying and so the Nationals is, too.
>Maybe the 58th next year will raise up the attendance a bit, because
>Long Beach, CA is better connected to the world and more attractive than
>Wichita, KS, was.
>But as long as the NEC still forces "proper" attire, but means
>"Traditional" in the definition of Legacy, Callerlab, ECTA and EAASDC,
>instead of  "casual" or at least "proper" in the definition of Legacy,
>etc.,- and as long as there still are too many people in the hobby who
>won't see the hard reality and block any major changes to adjust the
>hobby to the needs of the actually and younger customers, square dancing
>won't stop extincting.

Looking around the dance floors I noticed that the dress code wasn't 
being enforced. There were plenty of guys in short sleeved shirts and 
women in slacks dancing.  I don't know the numbers of young dancers 
at the convention as a percentage of total dancers, but it seemed to 
me, there were more younger dancers there this year than I remember 
in previous years. And not all were from exhibition groups. In fact, 
there was one major exhibition group missing this year -- The 
Maycroft Square Tappers.

It would be interesting to see the percentage of youth dancers at the 
last few conventions.

Ken