Puget Sound Dance Audience Potential
For ecstatic dance and other spiritual movement practices
Updated January 5, 2005
Keep in mind that that increasing the size of the pie is much more feasible than most people realize in most situations. Awareness of dance as a spiritual practice has only reached a very small portion of the population.
The population statistics are there because a 1% increase of a big pie generates a bigger increase in participants for the effort invested than a 10% increase in a small pie. Continuing with the pie metaphor, as big pies get bigger the effect tends to flow into neighboring smaller pies, so when evangelizing it makes sense to focus on the big pies first. A critical subtlety is being able to see many small pies as one big heterogeneous pie. Doing this really helps leverage the effort to increase the average level of participation.
Maintaining a focus on cooperative efforts to incase the size of the participation pie is very effective in increasing total participation, and avoiding fears of loosing a small piece of a small pie.
These numbers were put together because it takes a fairly large or specialized population base to sustain a regular ecstatic dance, and it is helpful to see where the population is and isn’t when looking for locations to evangelize and schedule dance related activities in. Once there is a well established regular dance or class, then occasional special events are possible away from centers of population because there is better access to webs of personal relationships where interest in dance is shared.
All numbers below are in thousands, so 1,000 would be a million people.
Key factors, that I have seen, that would be good to consider are:
Summary for Greater Puget Sound
1659 King County (year 2000 road atlas; City of Seattle 531 people)
1326 All other USA counties (year 2000 road atlas)
1000 Vancouver/Victoria British Columbia Canada area (year 1997 road atlas)
4705 People in the greater Puget Sound area
USA Counties around Puget Sound
By regularly sustain a dance, I mean a pretty subjective observation that there is a dance every month of the year of something like 10-20 people so some significant dance energy is generated. The amount of interest seems to be a more important factor than the size of the local population.
The areas that seem to regularly sustain at least one monthly dance are:
South Whidbey Island and Jefferson County
The counties that seem to regularly sustain multiple dances a month are:
King (in Seattle), Thurston (in Olympia), and Kitsap (on Bainbridge Island)
In a clockwise direction, starting from the north, from a year 2000 road atlas:
159 Whatcom County (Bellingham 64)
13 San Juan County including Lopez, Orcas, San Juan, and Shaw Islands
73 Island County/Whidbey Island
98 Skagit County - Mount Vernon
561 Snohomish County - Everett
1659 King County (Seattle 531) (Vashon Island 10)
681 Pierce County (Tacoma 181)
201 Thurston County - Olympia
233 Kitsap County - Bremerton, Bainbridge Island
27 Jefferson County (Port Townsend 7)
2985 total
Vashon Island population from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vashon_Island
Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada Area (1997 numbers from a road atlas)
472 Vancouver
38 North Vancouver
159 Burnaby
18 Port Moody
37 Port Couquitlam
44 New Westminster
127 Richmond
895 total
Victoria, British Columbia, Canada Area (1997 numbers from road atlas)
71 Victoria
16 Esquimalt
18 Oak Bay
105 total
These are additional areas that have some potential to support ecstatic dances either because of the size of the population or because of the interests of people living in the area. If I’ve missed an area that is successfully supporting an ecstatic dance, or related dance practice, I’d like to hear about it.
The areas are listed from north to south.
413 Spokane County (City of Spokane 186)
This area is about 70 miles south of Spokane Washington.
41 Whitman County Washington (City of Pullman 26)
18 Washington State University, Pullman campus enrollment
35 Latah County Idaho (City of Moscow 21)
13 University of Idaho, enrollment
107 total (some students are probably full time residents, so this is a bit high)
The city of Portland Oregon (491) crosses multiple county boundaries, so it isn’t listed with a specific county below.
327 Clark County Washington (City of Vancouver 63)
643 Multnomah County Oregon
390 Washington County Oregon
332 Clackamas County Oregon
1692 total
310 Lane County (City of Eugene 126)
102 Deschutes County (City of Bend 33)
Near the border of southern Oregon and northern California
This is a large area, its 44 miles from Grants Pass to Ashland, and 71 miles from Ashland to Mt. Shasta. It’s largely very conservative with pockets of very liberal/progressive scattered all over. There isn’t much cultural middle ground. People who like hand percussion music generally drive for 2 hours to go to dances in Ashland because its ether that, or visit friends. There are occasionally dances at other locations in this area. If flyers were posted far enough in advance in Ashland (months) the news of an event will eventually reach most pockets of population that would be interested in ecstatic dance.
74 Josephine County Oregon (City of Grants Pass 22)
172 Jackson County Oregon (City of Medford 57, City of Ashland 16)
46 Siskiyou County California (Cities of Yreka, Weed, and Mt Shasta)
292 total
128 Humboldt County California (City of Arcata 17)
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