I'm doing a little research for a project and was wondering if any one has seen stat figures for the following:

1. Statistics for the number of dancers/participants there are in the U.S. (or world) broken down by dance styles (tango, swing, salsa, etc.)?

Anyone seen figures on this anywhere?

Thanks

http://www.geocities.com/_ynot_/Home.html

Try this link

Thanks for suggesting my website Blair. As I responded to this prompt in another forum, however, in point of fact there are no reliable demographic data for this type of thing.

While USABDA can tell you how many registered amateurs there are, but then there are probably 2-6 times as many people who are more casual regarding their participation (mind you, not necessarily regarding their dancing) that do not register. Similarly, the NDCA can say how many registered pros they have, but numerous small scale and local "teachers" are not within this structure.

Tango, swing, and salsa are even less "centralized," so any types of numbers for them are that much harder to come by -- and less representative.

Finally, perhaps the largest obstacle to such data is the lack of discrete threshold, i.e., when does someone "count" as a dancer? When they have had "x" # of lessons? When they go out "x" amount of time/month? Etc.

http://www.geocities.com/_ynot_/Home.html ~ Studying the culture and community of ballroom and dancesport (and salsa)!

I think you are going to find accurate data almost impossible to obtain.

The easy way to get numbers would be to ask some leading organizations - but none of them have very large market penetration (who wants to join an organization and pay dues just to dance?). And if a style has competing organizations (such as the USABDA and NDCA amateur ballroom registries), how will you know how many of the same people are on both lists?

Going the other way, most of these dance forms have too small a following in the general population to learn anything from a random survey.