I'm curious. It seems to me that most of the posting on the forum appear to be concerned with international style. (Please tell me if you think that premise is incorrect.)

But the variations Jonathon posts (and that I love) are American style. That seems to be a disconnect. One audience for the forum, and another for the variations.

Any comments?

Jerry

I can't do much about controlling who uses the message board, so the audience here is what it is.

There are many factors which lead to a larger percentage of international style-related posts, such as: (1) the highly technical nature of standard (ever notice the abundance of standard vs Latin posts here?), and (2) the fact that this website is not limited to the U.S. only, and to the rest of the world American style is almost unheard of, or at best a very small niche.

The variations are currently American only, not because I want to be thought of or used as an American style website, but because that's what we decided to shoot first. We can't afford to do everything at once, so when making the choice, we decided to start with American. There are still 3 more sets of variations to come: The 2 Int'l sets (Standard and Latin), and a social set including Lindy, WC Swing, Hustle, Salsa, and NC 2-Step.

Eventually the lines between the message board and other areas of the website will be blurred, as I work towards wiki-izing the website content itself, and integrating the message throughout the whole website (for example adding messaging capabilities to the Variation page for comments, questions, etc). Between this and the addition of Int'l style variations *and* Int'l style bronze syllabus basics, I suspect the website will feel much more cohesive over the coming months and years.

Regards,
Jonathan

Jonathan-

Please under no circumstances should you regard my comment as a criticism. I love the variations. I was just curious.

Jerry (eagerly awaiting the smooth dvd)

Also, the role of "variations" in the international style dances is much more minor, and comes so much later in the dancer's careers (after exhaustive work on the details of action) that comparable presentation of them isn't as worthwhile as it is for styles where choreography plays an earlier role.