Dance Selection Experiment Starting This Week
From Boots 'n' Buckles Dance Club
11/10/2006:
With the goal of providing the best possible dance experience for BnB members and guests, the BnB board is working with our D.J. to modify the dance selection process. The D.J. will select dances prior to 10 p.m.
from a list of dances that have proven to fill the dance floor at Swiss Park. The dance request lists will continue to be available at 8 p.m. for new requests, but the D.J. will not select from these requests until after 10 p.m. The D.J. will add/delete dances to/from the proven list based on the success
of filling the dance floor. The winner's choice dance cards will continue to be honored throughout the evening.
The goal remains to fill the floor with dancers for every dance prior to 10 p.m.
The experiment began on 11/10/2006 and will continue until further notice. Please let any board member know if your dance experience is better or worse.
Note added 11/25/2006:
In response to comments the board has received, we offer this expanded description of the experiment and the desired goals. First, Boots 'n' Buckles is trying an experiment, not implementing a new policy. Even though the DJ is playing proven floor-fillers before 10:00, a lot of the dances played then will have many initials on the request list, since they indeed fill the floor. Anything that the DJ is not sure will fill the floor will not be played until after 10:00. At that time he will play dances that have been signed up for on the request list that haven't already been played prior to 10:00. The "Name Your Dance" cards that are won each Friday will continue to be played throughout the evening as usual.
A "floor-filler" is just that, it fills the floor. This does not mean that everyone has to be dancing, but our goal is that people leave the dance tired from dancing rather than have them leave because they are tired of sitting. There is no approved list of floor-fillers because only the DJ has control of what he plays. We depend on the DJ to know the audience and have a good feel as to which dances to play. In this, he is guided by many factors, and not simply the count of initials on the request list. The fact that a dance has many initials next to it is not necessarily a good assessment of the dance’s popularity. For example, a very popular dance might have relatively few initials because everyone knows it's popular and expects it to be played. But another dance that has many initials might be a new dance that was recently taught, but which nobody else has even heard of yet. So, the popularity of a dance cannot be accurately determined from a request list. Now, eventually that new dance could become popular and start to fill the floor when it is played after 10:00. The DJ will notice this and start to play it before 10:00. Also, the DJ could play some older dances that were once very popular but have faded from view (for example, ‘Hot Tamales’, ‘Wait a Minute’, ‘Titanic’). The first few times these were played recently (under the experiment, it would have been after 10:00), they did not fill the floor, but soon they did and now they can be played before 10:00 because they have (re-)achieved "floor-filler" status.
We repeat that this is an experiment. We expect to continue this for a while, and we look forward to any comments or suggestions dancers might have about it. These can be brought to any board member or placed in the suggestion box on Friday. For example, a recent suggestion that we plan to implement is to give instructors in attendance a “Name Your Dance” card, which can be played before 10:00, providing a little more exposure for hot new dances. For those interested, the DJ usually gives us his play list within a week after each Friday night dance, and as soon as possible it is added to our website. We plan to continue to assess the experiment and modify it to better attain our goal of making Boots ‘n’ Buckles the most fun place to dance on Friday night.