In late 2016 several organizers noticed that attendance at their
dances had been down, and I ran
the numbers for BIDA. At the time I didn't see much. Rerunning
the numbers now, however, it does look like attendance is down:
This graph excludes special events, so no Sparks, Family Dances, etc.
My guess is that there's always some amount of people coming in and
going out, and that BIDA isn't doing as well as it had been at
attracting new dancers. But it could also be that the rate at which
people leave has gone up; I don't have a good idea.
I was curious whether the switch
to Larks/Ravens contributed, but the first dance where we tried
that out was 2017-04-02 and the downward trend starts over a year
earlier:
(The dance is still a lot of fun at the size it was in 2011-2013, but
it generally feels better at the larger size. Also the finances work
out better with more dancers. [1])
Update 2018-03-15: Since writing this, our attendance has
recovered some. The five non-special-event dances too recent to be
included in this data have averaged 121 people.
Update 2018-04-23: And still more improvement:
[1] While this puts attendance back in the range it was in 2011-2013,
expenses are higher now. The main changes are:
- Rent has gone up several times, from ~$200 to $450/night.
- Increasing pay for callers and musicians from $75 to $100
Referenced in: Seasonal Patterns in BIDA's Attendance
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