We figured, if people didn't feel like dancing at the beginning, they wouldn't do it. And we left the house lights on for the first minutes so everybody who'd rather not be in the dancemob has the chance to locate the nearest exit. Since most of the people did join in and didn't seem to have a problem with it, we'll do it again next year, though
It's not like we didn't have a few hundret of happy suiters there, that's for sure. Next year we'll leave everyone who doesn't want to dance more time to escape.
We did recognize the drop in dancers over the first two hours, and we figured it had both to do with the fact that the Thursday evening dance has ALWAYS been less popular than the one on Saturday, and that due to a communications messup, the hotel insisted on having all doors closed because of a smoke detector in the lobby being triggered, and a non-authorized party going on the second floor elevator platform that took away lot of the attention.
I wasn't at the dance myself, so I can't comment on the music being played, and if there is any correllation. There will always be complaints about all kinds of music, and the type of music being played has not really changed during the last years except for the natrual tendencies within the genre. So if we did have a noticeable drop in attendance this year, either everyone suddenly changed their music preferences at once (unlikely) or we had some other kind of problem. We know that fast, electronic music is not everyone's cup of tea, but we had 1300 people on site, and we know that, on the other hand, a large majority DOES enjoy this kind of music - and kenai usually knows what furries like. He's not doing it for the first time. We are going to review the recordings though, and discuss it with the other DJs - who I consider our panel of experts on issues like these.
So, I'm invoking the same rule like last year: Please no discussions about music styles. It really IS pointless. We're sorry the music doesn't make everyone happy, but it's unrealistic to expect it EVER will. It's impossible