Author: Human

2012 Dance attendance rates – About 150,000

It’s hard to find current data – 2012 research released in 2015 seems to be about as close as we can get. The 2012 NEA States of Engagement report includes this bit of information – Baltimore is part of this, but the Washington, D.C. region probably biases the results a bit (still looking for more granular or current data, if you have any tips).

The percent of adults who attended a dance performance in 2012 in the Washington-Baltimore-Northern Virginia, DC-MD-VA-WV MSA (Metropolitan Statistical Area) was about 9.2% (range 7.0-12.0%).

If we use the lower-bound (7%), and apply that to the Baltimore region, dance attendance could be…

Region Total pop Adult pop Dance attendance
Anne Arundel 573,235 444,830 31,138
Baltimore City 611,648 483,202 33,825
Baltimore County 832,468 652,655 45,656
Carroll 167,781 131,037 9173
Harford 252,160 195,424 13,680
Howard 321,113 242,119 16,948
Total 2,758,405 2,149,267 150,449

Add this all up and it suggests a dance attendance population of about 150,000 people in and immediately around Baltimore.

Baltimore dance graduates, a longer view

A while ago, I made a short post about dance graduates in Baltimore. Since it’s graduation season, I thought it would be appropriate to fulfill the “I’ll come back to this eventually” promise with a deeper set of data. To begin, I’ll be a bit generous, and include both the University of Maryland main campus (College Park, MD) and Frostburg State University (Frostburg, MD) in the regional scope. UMCP is the only regional institution that offers a Masters degree in dance (designated UMCP-M). This data set represents 792 degrees awarded over 14 years (this isn’t necessarily 792 different dancers – some may have both a Masters degree from UMCP and a Bachelors degree from some other local institution). All institutions combined graduate an average of 56(.6) dancers per year for the past 14 years.
Continue reading “Baltimore dance graduates, a longer view”

If Cities Could Dance: Baltimore

Going all the way to San Francisco to pick up some of the dance of Baltimore… KQED brings you If Cities Could Dance: Baltimore

KQED highlights Terry Wedington AKA TSU Terry, Brandon Dawson AKA McLovin, and Janiyah Johnson AKA Nirow.

Some photos of TSU Terry and some coverage of the Baltimore Club scene from the Baltimore Sun.

More on Team Squad Up.

Lots more going on in the city… is anyone covering it?

Also in the series, Detroit, San Francisco, New Orleans, Los Angeles, and Portland.

Dance in public schools is real money and lots of dancers

As a point of information, because it’s in front of me… In Baltimore and 6 counties surrounding (Anne Arundel, Baltimore City, Baltimore County, Carroll, Frederick, Harford, Howard), I’ve found 71 public school dance programs with dedicated instructors. Most (44) are high schools, with 23 middle schools and 4 elementary schools.

It’s not entirely fair (I don’t know about their individual workloads or schedules, and some definitely teach more than dance), but the average teacher salary in Maryland hovers around $60,000. If there are 71 [different] dance teachers in public schools in Maryland, that alone represents something around $4,000,000 in dance-teacher wages.

Straying even further into the speculative, if each of these teachers has just 30 students, that’s more than 2000 dancers-in-training in the public schools.

Does anyone have suggestions about where to find data to validate the speculative? How many students does a public school dance teacher teach in a given school year? Are dance teacher salaries in line with average teacher salaries? What do the private schools add to this?

Baltimore Regional Dance Survey 2017 Summary

To make this a little easier (the blog format puts things in reverse-chronological order) for people coming to explore the Baltimore Regional Dance Survey from 2017, here are the relevant items…

Please keep in mind the biases apparent in the BRDS2017 respondent pool – BRDS2017 did not successfully reach respondents in all of Baltimore City, and did not reach young dancers or dancers in less-popular forms (e.g., Aerialists, Flamenco, Burlesque, Indian, Folkloric). With that firmly in mind, in reading-order, the summary posts discussing BRDS2017 are:

Baltimore Regional Dance Survey – The Geography of Respondents
BRDS2017 – Gender and Age
How Do Baltimore Dancers Spend Their Time?
Exploring Baltimore Dance Forms
Baltimore Dance Forms in Three Dimensions
Baltimore Dance Classes
Characteristics of Baltimore Dance Classes
Travel for Dance Classes
Economics of Baltimore Dance Classes
Baltimore Dance Class Space Satisfaction
Baltimore Dance Instructors On Their Available Studios
Baltimore’s Dance Performance Spaces
BRDS Opinions On Performance Space in Baltimore
Satisfaction with Baltimore Dance Performance Spaces
Ideal Baltimore Dance Venue Capacity
Baltimore Regional Dance Services Demand
Baltimore Regional Dance Services Supply
Dance Issues as Revealed by the Baltimore Regional Dance Survey 2017

If you’re new to the BRDS, or just curious about what’s going on here… that will hopefully (!) give you some idea.

Once you’ve digested all that, please consider participating in the 2018 survey.

Baltimore Regional Dance Survey and the Facebook issues

In light of recent Facebook-related scandals, a few words about the Baltimore Regional Dance Survey and how it’s set up.

This year, BRDS is self-hosted, so there is no survey company that has access to the data. There are no ads, no trackers, and no analytics services attached to any pages within the survey itself. The survey operates on a shared Ubuntu (Linux) server in the United States (pretty sure this is southern California). Of course, the hosting company can access pretty much anything they want on their servers, but the one we picked has a history of standing up to intrusive warrants (e.g., this case). We think they’re among the “good guys.”

The survey runs on LimeSurvey (and that should be very apparent if you visit the survey page at https://inthedancersstudio.com/brds/index.php/692798?lang=en – the LimeSurvey logo remains in place). LimeSurvey is open-source, so you can check that out. The BRDS website is SSL-encrypted. The Baltimore Regional Dance Survey is configured for anonymity (that’s why you get the tokens and links in your registration email) – it’s an extra step, but it removes your email address from your survey results. You do have to register with an email address, and associated with that address is information about when you registered, if you completed the survey, and your first and last names (if you provided them).

A special note about email – if you register with an email address that’s different than the one we originally used to invite you (this is perfectly ok), we won’t [necessarily] know you’ve participated, and may keep bugging you. Apologies in advance, but please respond to the invitation email and let us know you’ve completed the survey or don’t want to hear from us anymore (or until there are results to see, or for another year…). There is a question toward the end of the survey about participating in workshops and events – several people have picked “yes” but haven’t followed up with an email outside the survey, which means we don’t know who you are (we can count “yeses” and compare to the inbox, and there’s a big difference).

In the Dancer’s Studio does have Google Calendars on the front page (and if you go there, Google CAN track you), but if you stick to the BRDS category (https://www.inthedancersstudio.com/category/research/brds/), there is nothing to track you there. In invitations and registration emails, we’ve tried to make sure that no links take you to a place that can snoop on you. Your participation in the survey and access to results and updates on the survey (like this one) should be tracker-free.

Some of those steps do make it more difficult to participate in the survey, and that will reduce participation. Please help us by sharing the survey with your colleagues.

While we can’t guarantee things won’t go wrong, we think we’ve done what we can to protect the integrity of the survey and you as respondents. Of course, if you have any questions, please do get in touch.

Baltimore Regional Dance Survey logic errors

The BRDS2018 survey was offline for a few minutes this afternoon to fix some issues with the survey logic (in particular, not having a chance to describe an “Other” response and the injury section). I think everything is fixed now and we’re live again. Thanks for the catch!

If you missed these questions – about performance venue capacity, dance injuries (particularly if you were injured during 2017), and services you provide to dancers you should be able to go back to the survey and pick them up with your anonymous token (just follow the link in the registration email again).

Time to complete the Baltimore Regional Dance Survey 2018

First, thanks to everyone for taking the time to participate!

Based on the responses so far, it’s taking people between 10 and 30 minutes to complete the survey (now you have some idea of what you’re getting yourself into…)

Also, a quick apology for a grammatical omission in the invitation emails. Whoups. Fixed now.