scrabbler1
Give me a museum and I'll fill it. (Picasso) Give me a forum ...
- Joined
- Nov 20, 2009
- Messages
- 6,705
OMG, square dancing, I remember the scene form The Odd Couple when Oscar Madison made up the lyrics , it was hysterical. im looking for the clip. UPDATE hahahaha, here it is im dying with laughter.http://www.oddcouple.info/sounds/squaredance.wav
You and pb4uski beat me to it. As someone who has been square dancing off and on for the last 40 years, I have seen the steep decline in the activity. Back in the 1970s and 1980s, the peak years for square dancing, I danced at many local clubs here on Long Island and in the general NYC area. I also danced on some of my California vacation trips in the 1980s. We had well-attended beginner clubs and regular dance clubs nearly every night of the week back then. There was a dress code, too. There were stores which sold square dance attire.
I stopped dancing in 1988 (remember how there was a huge square dance exhibition during the 1988 Winter Olympics in Calgary?) before returning in 2001 when I began working part-time instead of FT and had the time and energy to do it at night. I was stunned at how much it had declined in the 13 years I was away. And in the last 16 years I have danced since my return it has continued to decline with clubs folding due to low attendance (people move away, become physically unable to dance, or die), and callers retiring. My caller, the famous Lee Kopman, is in his mid-80s but is thankfully in pretty alth. At 54, I am the third youngest dancer although our youngest dancer, a man who was nearly 49, unexpectedly died last month.
It is very tough to get younger people to commit to taking beginner classes so they can replace the really older folks when they can't dance any more. I wonder how much longer our small, shrinking clubs can last.