finding instructors

inspired by deserts without dancers, and with an ulterior motive in mind (i really needed to do something like this for an entirely different reason), i give you a map that represents the geographic availability of instructors in any middle eastern/oriental dance form that i could find.

on this map, the circles represent about 45-60 minutes of travel (a figure chosen for compatibility with the deserts without dancers effort – depends a lot on the kind of road in your particular direction). also, no precision here – i just eyeballed the cities.

i eventually decided to include the bhuz list of almost 1000 instructors (973 as i write this). there is some duplication within the bhuz list, but in the interest of the broadest possible coverage, i’ve mapped everything i could find quickly. there’s also an issue of out-of-date material, so some of these points may be locations of former-instructors, or former locations of instructors that have moved.

a couple notes: this is just people who claim to be instructors, only a few of these have comments or references from students. the bhuz data set is also full of errors (los angeles, colorado got my attention).

update (2004.03.25): a couple people have asked about the map – this isn’t the same as the deserts without dancers list – what i’ve mapped is “positive space” – the circles represent places where dance instructors do (or did…) exist. christine is making a list of places where instructors need to exist (“negative space”) because someone’s looking (she might correct me on that). anyway, they are complimentary (positive space vs. negative space).

update (2004.03.26): another question came up regarding the instructor map – someone asked about how many instructors were represented. i didn’t keep a list, but what i can do is provide a general idea. the bhuz list was almost 1000 instructors, and i made no effort to map density – once i found an instructor in a city, i dropped a circle there and moved on (this was a quick effort, not a research project! :) ). anyway, if you are interested in density, i’ve included the “hits” from the bhuz list below the cut here for you. no real surprise, california takes the… lead.

update (2004.03.28): this post has been linked from the deserts without dancers page – just a note, the map represents something like 1100 to 1200 instructors – the vast majority come from the bhuz data set, but it also includes instructors i know personally (a dozen or so), and several more-formal lists from around the web.

(just the state density data below…)

0 – ky, la

1 – mt, sd, wv

2 – ia, nd wy

3 – de, ms

4 – id, me, sc

5 – mn, vt, ak, ar, ri

7 – ne

8 – nh, ct

10 – ks, wi

11 – hi, ok

12 – md, nv

15 – in

16 – nm, pa

18 – ma, ut

19 – az

20 – mo, nc

21 – mi

24 – co, nj, oh

27 – ga, va

28 – al, or

30 – il

45 – wa

57 – fl

58 – ny

78 – tx

171 – ca