I read a story written by Josh Allen, an owner of a dance studio that closed down. It was heart warming for him to hear how many people miss his classes. He would scratch his head wondering why these people that he hasn’t seen for years at his classes were so impacted by the studio being gone. After some reflection he realized that these people always took for granted that the studio would be there and one day they would return to dance.

The reality is that local dance studios and dance venues need people to show up and support, or one day they will not be able to continue offering dancing to the local community. The smaller the community the easier it is for them to go away. They bank on the support of their local dancers and if enough people decide to dance consistently dance outside their local community, when they decide they would like somewhere to dance local, the places will no longer exist.

In the less popular dance like Kizomba, Argentine Tango and Brazilian Zouk, people enjoy going to the bigger more populated venues, and that is understandable, but without the smaller local dance studios and venues, these bigger venues eventually suffer too.

Here in our local area of Orange County in the Hudson Valley, there are not very many dance studios or venues to dance and the above briefly explains a main reason for this. We have a few dance studios and venues in some of the bigger towns like Middletown, Chester, Newburgh & Warwick and even fewer clubs and venues offering dances.

The point of this post is that many local dancers don’t have the time to drive an hour away to go to dance. Sometimes it’s nice to have somewhere local to go. If you feel the same then let’s make an effort to support our local dancing when we can.