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 _______________________________________________ Tango-L mailing list [email protected] http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/tango-l
