Local franchise Ceroc Passion have just raised their "on the door" freestyle prices by £1 to £10. Ceroc Central pushed up their prices by a similar amount in January.
Last edited by frodo; 9th-June-2011 at 12:35 AM.
Local franchise Ceroc Passion have just raised their "on the door" freestyle prices by £1 to £10. Ceroc Central pushed up their prices by a similar amount in January.
In general many organizer's, including ourselves at Newbury, offer discounts of around £2 for advance online freestyle bookings. That helps to keep costs down for dancers and helps to give organizers an idea of what numbers to expect.
Whenever we run a themed ball, if we have a good number of advance bookings we'll look at spending more money on decorations etc. because we have an improved expectation of revenue.
Goes to show how long since you've been dancing! Freestyles in Scotland are only £10 on the door. For example, you can dance at the Bonar hall (normally 1st Saturday of the month), Rutherglen Town Hall (this Friday), The Hangar in Perth, or St Stephens in Edinburgh for £10 every month.
We run occasional Special Events which are £12 or more, when the venue is particularly spectacular (and expensive), and we offer extras, like Sparkling wine reception, etc...
Franck.
There's an A.P.P. for that!
Tweet bemoaning closure of classes in W. London at Chiswick and Ealing, anybody know of new ones opening? http://twitter.com/#!/allwellandgood...86396129280001
A good bit of advice for anyone trying to keep costs down is to book in advance on-line if at all possible as it's normally cheaper and in some cases the savings can be very significant. To get the biggest savings you sometimes have to book quite a long way in advance, but sometimes you still get a discount if you book on line at the last minute, assuming the event isn't a sell out by then of course.
In the South, where I live, it seems that in the last couple of years the number of freestyles has increased. I'm not sure about attendance at weekday classes but based on the freestyle entries on the Southern Jive Calendar, there are plenty of freestyles available each weekend, some weekends there are up to 14 in the Southern area! Some of these are regularly sold out so I really don't think that the MJ scene is struggling, particularly in the southern area. Admittedly some operators have reduced their venues, but others have moved to larger venues and there are also new operators starting up. It remains to be seen how long things can expand before saturation point is reached but currently, it appears that point is still a distance away.
Last edited by philsmove; 10th-June-2011 at 08:40 AM.
I agree with this, mostly.
In the real world (rather than the world of advertising) I've found that a woman with no dance experience will have a fantastic time at a freestyle. Unfortunately a man with no dance experience usually has a dismal time.
However, a few lessons later the guy is loving it and can attend any freestyle.
My first freestyle was a Valentine's Hammersmith. I was terrified! I must've enjoyed it though as I was back for the St Patrick's day one a few weeks later. And I'd been dancing about 9 months by that stage, so far from a complete beginner, though in retrospect I can see how bad I really was. So it may depend on the lady and the freestyle as to how easy she finds it.
So, in theory, freestyles should encourage men to take more lessons
That certainly was my experience, after my first freestyle, i started going to several classes a week, rather than just one
(I dont think my first experience of a freestyle could be described as "dismal" challenging may be, but definitely not dismal )
Of course back in my day there were no freestyle evenings The closest there was was Mike Ellard's Casbah in Farringdon and even that had an hour class albeit only intermediate. I think the first proper freestyle was Hammersmith which started in 1995 I think. So I'd been dancing for 2 years by then. also I knew most of the people as I went to all the London venues, well a lot of people did.
Sounds like you are paying quite a lot. It seems quite a bit cheaper here in the South. Check out this thread. However, I do agree that if the event is a special, a Ball or one with a professional Cabaret for example, then the organiser will quite justifiably charge more. A recent freestyle at the Spinnaker Tower in Portsmouth was £20!! That is just taking the P**s.
I live in the same area, but see it a bit differently. Within an hour's drive of my house there are 3 Ceroc franchises. Between them, there's at least one freestyle every Friday and Saturday each week. There are also 2 large independents that manage to have a couple of freestyles each weekend too. Then there are about 5 small companies with one or two freestyles a month. (Observation: often these companies only run freestyles). Just for good measure, there are also a fair few charity events too.
Overall, I think the number of migrant dancers is fairly fixed, so we're getting rather thinly spread over all of the freestyles. Interestingly, the local market is breaking-up into separate niches. One of the large independents seems to be pitched at the 50+ group with little music played dated after 1980. One of the smaller ones is trying to specialise in Blues, even though I don't think it has enough competent Blues dancers yet.
Me? I go where there is cake.
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