Template talk:Dance

Dance music genres

This template, which falls under wikiproject dance, is focused on dance topics. Recently, the "dance music" entry was removed from See Also and replaced by an entire table row that lists "dance music" genres. Aside from having "dance" in their names, these have nothing to do with dance and therefore do not belong on this template. If this is appropriate then it would also make sense to create another row that lists, for example, all songs that have "dance" in their titles. I propose that: (1) the template be restored so that "dance music" is listed under See Also; and (2) all dance music genres be removed from this template. If it's important to list these genres on a template, they can be added to an appropriate music-oriented template. Lambtron (talk) 17:02, 29 January 2011 (UTC)

I agree, its just that they have dance in the title, which is only because of the way in which popular music genre names are created (they tend to be portmanteaus of other genres). They don't really believe on a dance based template.--SabreBD (talk) 17:49, 29 January 2011 (UTC)

The dance music genres are related & oriented with dance. Their genres have a different setting, like dance-pop is a dance music genre in a pop setting. Superastig (talk) 01:41, 30 January 2011 (UTC)

An entry under "See Also" is fine, but an entire row for "Music" at the same level as "Types", "Genres" and "Technique" does not seem justified to me; a seperate {{Dance music}} template might be. — Robert Greer (talk) 12:22, 1 February 2011 (UTC)

The template has been restored to its former state per consensus. As suggested above, it might be logical to list dance music genres on a music-centric template such as {{Dance music}}, but it's clearly inappropriate here. Lambtron (talk) 03:00, 2 February 2011 (UTC)

Genre issues

I feel there should be a criterion genres should have to meet for inclusion on this template. If we include Chicago stepping, for example, WP:WEIGHT requires we include the fifty-odd other substyles in Street dance#List of street dances, and even if we did it wouldn't be very fair to give them all equal billing with Ballet or Hip hop. Also, there are several instances of both subgenres and their supergenres present: ballroom + salsa, tango, waltz; folk + circle, line, war; street + hip hop, steppin', krumping.

Suggestion 1: only include genres rated "high-importance" or "top-importance." (This would be hard to keep track of, especially because Dance has a massive assessment backlog, but would outsource this decision to individual talk pages.)

Suggestion 2: only include genres which have bluelinked subgenres. (This might still leave us with too many links—see that list of vernacular dances)

Suggestion 3: include all the bluelinked genres we can think of, but organize them more accessibly. (Don't know how this would happen. Maybe each top-importance genre gets a dozen subgenres max?)

Votes? Thoughts? Other suggestions? Should I post this at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Dance? FourViolas (talk) 16:07, 24 November 2014 (UTC)

Your third suggestion is already essentially covered by List of dance style categories, although that list is a mess. I think limiting it to top-level links is smart, but basing it on WikiProject assessment is difficult to maintain. I suggest establishing a local consensus here. Ibadibam (talk) 19:50, 4 March 2015 (UTC)

Good idea. Pinging Snow Rise, Lambtron, Poetzinger, Robertgreer, Coretheapple, Macdonald-ross, Mirokado, Ipigott, and Zdebe, all recently active Dance editors. Hi, all! Please allow me to take the opportunity to let you know about Talk:Concert dance#Remodeling, where Snow has lots of great plans, and an incubating Dance series box which could be considered as a supplement to this template. FourViolas (talk) 03:57, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

I'm basically of the same mind, with the additional caveat that not only is basing it on Wikiproject assessment an issue to maintain on a technical level, it also runs the risk of going into OR territory. This is actually an issue we've been discussing at the page Violas linked to. Finding reliable sources to establish definite boundaries between genres and asserting specific dates and relative importance is difficult for even a single genre, let alone judging the importance and level of distinctness of a specific style (emergent, established, or traditional) against all other forms of dance. Complicating the matter further is the fact that much of the limited academia on the subject is deeply affected by the influence of it being so close to the arts. Much of it is so pre-occupied with vague and abstract critical review (which is understandable to an extent, in that obviously we of all people can relate to how difficult it can be to capture dance in words) or else an equally nebulous application of sociological assessment of dance. My observation on the state of the field is that it would benefit from more actual dance historians, who would speak to general milestones at length and ideally do so in language plain enough that we could reference them more thoroughly for our encyclopedic purposes here.

This issue is important not just in regard to the content of particular articles, but also, obviously, the kind of organizational principle involved here. Note that I drew up a general break-down of genre relations for a similar discussion on categories, basing it upon a general sense of the sources, primary and secondary, on the topic. I'm not sure why I never implemented it, except to say I'm sure it was a combination of the tedium of the task and that no one else ever responded again and some consensus should really be at work in an area where subjectivity can creep in. That's exactly why we need a more uniform approach. But sourcing...that's going to be the headache. However we approach this, I want to create a method for avoiding any kind of genre-warring amongst later editors if we succeed in making dance a more robust area of editorial contribution. Snow ^{I take all complaints in the form of epic rap battles} 07:50, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

I tend to agree that we can't be asking Wiki editors to make judgments of that kind. Coretheapple (talk) 23:23, 6 March 2015 (UTC)

We could impose semi-arbitrary cutoffs based on depth of coverage; maybe "If you provide links on this page to 5 published books entirely about the genre in question, you may add it to the list." A dossier for ballet could be:

Vaganova

Apollo's Angels

Cambridge companion

Ballet in Western Culture

A queer history

With a cutoff of 5, postmodern and Morris dance barely qualify, hip-hop and ballet pass easily, and Lindy hop fails. This test could be a decent, if labor-intensive, indicator of which genres WP:RS consider important, and the threshold could be adjusted if we find ourselves with too many or to few. On the other hand, User:Ibadibam's fix seems spot-on enough that I wonder if we could trust to ad hoc consensus after all. FourViolas (talk) 05:12, 8 March 2015 (UTC)

I think contextual consensus is probably the only method forward here. Any kind of "rule of thumb" we construct here is unlikely to provide a consistently non-controversial method for delineating boundaries and verifiability is more about what our sources say and how they say it than how many of them make a particular claim. I think working through local consensus on these issues actually should be pretty easy for now, as there are relatively few of us working on dance articles and there seems to be some degree of agreement (or willingness to compromise on "good enough" solutions) when it comes to genre distinctions. Its later, when more (and possibly less flexible) editors get involved in this area that verifiability could prove a sticking point or a necesity to avoid genre warring. Snow ^{I take all complaints in the form of epic rap battles} 10:04, 15 March 2015 (UTC)

Agreed. As long as we're all content with mutual common sense, there's no need to worry about fussy criteria. Thanks for sorting out types vs. genres. FourViolas (talk) 13:13, 15 March 2015 (UTC)

Yeah, I think we need a different label for the first row aside from "types", which is way to vague. "Context" sounds too awkward though... "Social context" maybe? Snow ^{I take all complaints in the form of epic rap battles} 21:27, 15 March 2015 (UTC)

"Social and cultural context" is still a little odd because when we're talking about circle dance vs solo dance etc, we're talking about forms that transcend culture and society...there are circle dances in a variety of cultures, for example, so this isn't really a culture-dependent context. If anything, it's the second group in the navbox that represent specific cultural styles and contexts. It seems to me that there are three groupings for dance, all of which are lazily called "genres":

• Context: What is the purpose and context of the dance? This classification includes concert dance, war dance, erotic dance, etc.
• Cultural style: What is the "flavor" of the dance? What stylistic elements do the dancers incorporate into their movements? This would include Latin, African-American, Ballroom, etc.
• Form: What are the technical aspects of the dance? What figures and steps do the dancers use? Circle dance, line dance, partner dance, etc.

I've been trying to find some kind of reliable source for a theory of dance categorization that takes an intersectional approach (rather than lumping everything into a big list) and haven't found one yet. Will keep looking. Ibadibam (talk) 17:51, 16 March 2015 (UTC)

Heya, Ibadibam. The logic behind "social and cultural context" was for that section to serve as a cache-all for disparate classifications which are not a matter of genre or style. For example, African-American dance, which you moved back to genre section has nothing to do with any particular style; that article discuses hip-hop, folk, jive, jazz, funk and countless other styles that are only related via cultural linkage. That is, the header is meant to suggest these are articles which treat dance according to its social and/or cultural context, not necessarily one or both. There's really no other category to place African-American dance in the template but there, so the "cultural" pretty much has to stay ("context" alone is way to vague for that and other entries in that section) whereas "social" obviously is more apt for certain entries on the list, but to some degree both terms apply to each of the entries in that section. On the other hand, I don't see any harm in sectioning off the articles for terminology regarding the number of participants; I considered that myself, in fact, but decided against it because it was only five entries, I couldn't come up with a terribly apt label, and it is a social distinction ultimately, so I was happy to leave those entries in that section. But I've no strong objection to that distinction, by any means. I am going to change some of the other elements back, according to the above reasoning and further distinctions which I'll make in my edit summaries. Let me know what you think about the final result. Snow ^{I take all complaints in the form of epic rap battles} 22:33, 16 March 2015 (UTC)

I'm beginning to understand! I think we're getting tripped up semantically because of the multiple ways we can use cultural. There's one breakdown, "dances by culture", which would include Latin, African-American, Indian, Balkan, etc. and may be too large to include in the navbox. Then there's another breakdown, by social or cultural function, irrespective of specific culture, which I think is closer to how you're using it for our second navbox group.

For the specific case of "African-American dance", it may be that it doesn't fit into any of these categories. It certainly doesn't fit into the second, as no other article in that group covers dance within the context of a single culture. From my biased U.S. viewpoint, I see African-American dance as an internationally significant family of dance forms that's worthy of inclusion in this navbox. But as those dances have been exported to other cultures, perhaps it makes more sense to break them into the major subdivisions like hip-hop, tap, and so on, as they are already represented in group 3. I thought of doing something like African American (Breaking • Hip-hop • Jazz • Tap), but thought that might be a little cumbersome and hard for the reader to find what they were looking for. At any rate, if "African-American" is problematic, then "Latin" surely is as well. Ibadibam (talk) 22:55, 16 March 2015 (UTC)

Well "Latin" and "African-American" are not really used in the same way here, as one is an adjective describing a context and the other is the established proper noun/name of a genre. Latin dance (at least the kind of Latin dance spoken of in our article and the type of dance that people are usually referencing when they use the term) does not reference "dances of Latin America" but rather is the name of one of the two main categories of ballroom dance; ballroom is divided into "standard" ballroom (which is alternately known as "smooth" or "classic" ballroom and includes styles such as the waltz, quickstep, foxtrot, and tango) and "latin" ballroom (sometimes, but much less ubiquitously, also known as "rythmic" ballroom; this umbrella includes the cha-cha, samba, rumba, jive, ect.). Standard ballroom dance are generally danced with closer and more rigid frames and mostly developed earlier, in Europe. Latin ballroom styles evolved from the same tradition but the modern dances have radically different forms and are generally danced to more rhythmic music and they are now considered a completely different animal, though both categories are clearly forms of ballroom. The term "Latin" arose and stuck because these styles mostly did originate in Latin America, but they have since spread to become as global a form of dance as ever existed in the world; the name is to some extent a hold-over and there are of course other dances in Latin America which have nothing to do with ballroom. "African-American dance" is not a style or genre in any sense, we just happen to have an article that goes by that name which talks about the significance and history of dance in the African-American experience. So one is the established name of a genre, the other is an ad-hoc (though very much notable worthwhile) topic for an article.

That long-winded diatribe done though, let's try this: I'm going to move the African-American article to the "See also" section of the template, since you're right that it is "odd-man-out" in the social distinctions section. I think it's too important a topic to omit in its entirety, though I do wish we had a more robust selection of similar articles to add with it, since it sticks out a bit like a sore thumb. But not only is the miscellaneous section probably the best place for it, but now that you've moved it out of the section it was in, I no longer feel we should be married to keeping "cultural" in the title of that section and we can reference it simply as "social context" since that label is cleaner for just the items left in there.

BTW, thanks for pointing out that the "dance styles" cat no longer exists. Seems someone has been hard at work in Category:Dance; I can't say as I entirely agree with all of the organizational priorities they applied in their hierarchies, but something had to be done with that mess and as I said I was going to do it nearly a year ago, without ever getting around to it, I'm not really in a position to nit-pick. :) Snow ^{I take all complaints in the form of epic rap battles} 02:28, 17 March 2015 (UTC)

EB has a quite thorough discussion about this, acknowledging the ambiguities etc. and proposing a detailed organizational scheme. Worth a look. FourViolas (talk) 17:44, 17 March 2015 (UTC)

Kind of makes you think that perhaps we should start with a Dance style article (as opposed to the awkward, barely encyclopedic list that this term redirects to at present) to make a similar series of distinctions like those made in the lead of that article, so that a thorough explanation of the difficulties in establishign boundaries between dances can be linked to. Alternatively, we could make the "Types of dance" section of Dance more robust, but I don't want to complicate that article too much now that it's finally looking in increasingly good shape. I'm not sure who is most responsible for that, but it seems like the joint result of efforts from a number of different editors over the last six months; not so long ago, that article was a mess (at least, relative to its importance) and had a fair bit of original research, weight, and organizational problems. it could still use some polish in the format, but the tone of the current prose is a vast improvement and it strikes me that Dance style would be an easily notable and very useful article (though verifiability will clearly be a work in progress there as it is here and elsewhere on active dance articles). Snow ^{I take all complaints in the form of epic rap battles} 03:06, 18 March 2015 (UTC)

Shapes and participants

Regarding this edit, it would be nice if there were a top-level article describing set dancing in general. That would be worthy of inclusion, in my opinion. Squares, country dance, quadrilles, etc. are too much variety for this navbox, I'd think. Ibadibam (talk) 22:59, 24 March 2015 (UTC)

No objection here; certainly it would pass GNG without issue. If anyone has any sources in this area, I would be happy to contribute some edits to the prose. Snow ^{let's rap} 04:30, 2 April 2015 (UTC)

Flamenco

Could someone add Flamenco and categorize Flamenco jazz under it? 2601:C7:C201:C640:5470:F380:A795:9D7F (talk) 20:40, 23 April 2021 (UTC)

Y Partly done: The article flamenco jazz covers it only as a music genre, not as a dance genre. If there is a dance genre with this name, the article should first be expanded to cover it. Ibadibam (talk) 21:02, 23 April 2021 (UTC)

Bhangra

Could someone put Bhangra in this template? 2601:C7:C201:C640:6488:6115:1CFA:48D (talk) 14:19, 25 April 2021 (UTC)

 Not done. Please provide a reliable source to support your edit request. MBihun (talk) 14:22, 25 April 2021 (UTC)

How about the fact that it's listed here?

It would be included in the article Dance in India, which is linked under the section 'Regional', and is on the template {{Dance in India}}. Please notice that individual national dances are not listed on this template. Randy Kryn (talk) 14:27, 25 April 2021 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 20 October 2021

Could someone add Samba de Gafieira? 47.36.25.163 (talk) 21:14, 20 October 2021 (UTC)

Please be clear exactly where you would like it added. Thank you. --Ferien (talk) 18:08, 21 October 2021 (UTC)