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Our Last Scheduled All Singles Dance (after 28 years) (Alumni
Invited) was- January 26th and Wound Things Up After 28 years of
Friday All Singles Dances we discontinued the regular
(28years) Friday dances and have made the December 29th dance our last
regularly scheduled dance. The last regular dance held on the 29th
was well attended and many who had not been to the dances in years came
back for this dance.
Last Scheduled All Singles Dance (after 28 years) Then we decided
to do a special (Plus Alumni Invited) - January 26th To Wind Things
Up and over 400 singles showed up.
Many regulars attended this alumni dance as well as Ellen, our cashier for 22 years, as well as many others involved with the dances over
the
years.
There are thousands of couples, some married and some not, but still together that have met at the All Singles Dances. Met over the 28
years the dances have been going. So we decided to do a special
all singles dance with these alumni also invited along with the regular attendees on January 26th at the Camelback Inn. This was a last
chance for everyone to get together at what is the end of a long term
institution, the Friday Night All Singles Dances.
NOTE: We never figured out how to reach these thousands of couples that over the years met at the Friday night dances, and are together
today but no longer read our singles newspaper. We were happy
to see many folks again at this dance, sort of a home coming.
We have lost a couple of thousand dollars a month on the dances and the AZ
Single Scene newspaper over the last two years and there seems to be no
end to the trend of change in singles activities. Similar singles Dances
that we are familiar with around the country have either discontinued or
are considering discontinuing...
Hotels have become busier and harder to book space and charges have
increased to the point were we would have to have an increase in
attendance (admission price raises become counter productive) to break
even at a time were attendance has been dropping off for the last 3 years.
This combination would seem to be fatal because both appear to be going to
continue in the present directions.
When other dances around the country had gone to $9 we were still
$6.50. We have now gone to $8. which has affected attendance
somewhat initially. Our admission price is actually now $7.28.
We pay 56 cents in sales tax average, (varies with town) and 26 cents to
ascap ( music royalties for public performance) per person. To bookkeep all this brings our admission revenue to under $7.
Our dances where set up and ran to make it easy to meet people and have a
good time in a non-threatening atmosphere. The music we played was
controlled to make it easy to get everyone on the dance floor, music that
all could dance to and were familiar with, and keep
anyone from latching on to someone and tying them up for the evening.
In other words we did things to get everyone a chance to dance with
everyone in attendance. Some of these things irritated certain
people but the over all reputation was as result that it was easy to meet
people and they had a lot of success doing so at the all singles dances.
Two groups also were in conflict, the people that had spent $3,000 at
Arthur Murrays for dance lessons wanted to show off and use their newly
acquired skills, and those that were newly singled and had not danced for
years. The expert dancers who made a hobby of dancing
were very vocal about getting the music they wanted played.
The newly singled who could not readily meet and compete in dancing in
that world never raised their voices and just never came back. Since
we were primarily a meet people dance, not a ballroom dance for semi
expert dancers, we took a lot of heat over 28 years on hundreds of
different opinions of music we should be playing at what time.
Some of my other businesses have dropped off or been sold. Without a
lot of outside income, I can no longer afford to work long
hours, disregarding or not attending fully to other businesses (6 in the
midwest) and wind up not only doing a lot of extra work, but paying
out of pocket to keep the singles businesses going.
The twenty eight years included many years where we ran as many as three
dances a week. Our best guess is we have put together over 2,500
dances. Both the number of years and the number of dances probably
exceed any other operator of dances in the world.
It seemed to me that with 28 years experience, I should be able to figure
out how to turn the dances around. However, the overall trend is
against it and my recent experience is that it is like swimming upstream.
It would seem this affects you very little other than now you may
have to figure out what else to do on Friday nights.
Thanks to all of our supporters over the years, a thanks not only from Harlan, and also from Jeff, and Janet Jacobsen who kept the
dances going for several years.
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