Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Dance

Hi! I'd like to draw your attention to the new WikiProject coordinators' working group, an effort to bring both official and unofficial WikiProject coordinators together so that the projects can more easily develop consensus and collaborate. This group has been created after discussion regarding possible changes to the A-Class review system, and that may be one of the first things discussed by interested coordinators. All designated project coordinators are invited to join this working group. If your project hasn't formally designated any editors as coordinators, but you are someone who regularly deals with coordination tasks in the project, please feel free to join as well. — Delievered by §hepBot (Disable) on behalf of the WikiProject coordinators' working group at 05:14, 28 February 2009 (UTC) [reply ]

I wonder whether some of these could be made more clear:

• Categories: It is unclear to me why dances are in multiple "main" categories, for example:
  • Category:Dance contains Zumba
  • Category:Dances contains Jazz dance
  • Category:Dance styles contains Salsa (dance)
  • It could help if these categories would have clear inclusion criteria described on the category pages.
• These lists are similar, but different:
  • List of dances
  • List of dance style categories
  • Why are they so different? Is (a) the only intended reason for difference the sorting order? Or (b) is dance supposed to refer to something different than dance style? In case of (a) the pages might be able to merge to a sorted list page and in case of (b) the difference may be clarified better.
• I am willing to help so far I can, but first I wonder whether there is any support for addressing this and/or whether you know whether I am missing some relevant background. LazyStarryNights (talk) 20:38, 29 July 2013 (UTC) [reply ]

I've diffused cat:dance and made other changes to resolve category issues, but the matter of cat:dances vs. cat:dance_styles remains. Please see the following RFC for a possible fix. As for the lists, a possible solution is to consolidate both lists and make it sortable by dance name, category, etc. Lambtron (talk) 14:21, 21 April 2014 (UTC) [reply ]

I've discovered an organizational problem in two dance-related categories: Category:Dance styles is a subcategory of Category:Dances, but many dance forms (48 to be precise) appear in both categories in violation of WP:SUBCAT ("a page or category should rarely be placed in both a category and a subcategory"). I think this should be fixed by having specific dance forms appear only in cat:dance_styles, but I'd appreciate the opinions of other editors before proceeding. Lambtron (talk) 14:21, 21 April 2014 (UTC) [reply ]

I'm a little confused (owing less to the way you phrased things and more to the convoluted nature of the situation). Are you suggesting that, within the main category, we include only divisions of dance which do not concern the form of movement being referenced or that we only include only genres and then specific dance styles within those genres? In other words, do you want the category/article branches to look like this:

• Category: Dance

• (sub)Category: Dance styles

• (sub-sub)Category:modern concert dance

• Article Contemporary dance
• Article Lyrical dance
• Article Modern dance

• (sub-sub)Category:Hip-hop dance
• (sub-sub)Category:Latin Ballroom

• Article Cha-cha
• Article Rumba
• Article Salsa (dance)
• Article Tango

• (sub)Category: Historical Dance
• (sub)Category: Sacred Dance

or more like this:

• Category: Dance

• (sub)Category: Concert dance

• Article Contemporary dance
• Article Lyrical dance
• Article Modern dance

• (sub)Category: Hip-hop dance
• (sub)Category:Latin Ballroom

• Article Cha-cha
• Article Rumba
• Article Salsa (dance)
• Article Tango

• (sub)Category: Folk Dance

• Article Irish folk dance

• (sub)Category: Historical Dance
• (sub) Category: Sacred Dance

? Snow talk 01:29, 12 June 2014 (UTC) [reply ]

Thanks for showing interest in this, Snow. Yes, it is very confusing, in large part because there are no standards for terminology or classification. What's the difference between a dance "type", "genre", and "style"? Is hip hop a type of dance, a dance style, a street dance genre, the name of a particular dance, or some combination of these? Should fanga song be in cat:dances or cat:dance_styles? Before answering, consider that template:dance shoehorns all dances into "types" and "genres", where "types" are very general classifications and "genres" are everything else. At this point I'm certain of only two things: cats should be logically organized so they are useful to readers, and no article should appear in both a cat and its supercat. Lambtron (talk) 14:31, 13 June 2014 (UTC) [reply ]

In that event, I'd suggest the following layout/hierarchy:

[Cat:Dance]

Sub-cats of [Cat:Dance] would include any of a number of subcats for genres ([Cat:Classical and concert dance], [Cat:Ballroom dance], [Cat:Hip-hop dance], [Cat:Jazz dance], [Cat:Swing dance], ect) and a number of subcats for topics which are not subtopics of any particular genre, including contexts ([Cat:Sacred Dance], [Cat: Historical dance], [Cat:Dance by country]), and other miscellany ([Cat:Dance companies], [Cat:Dance competitions and events], [Cat:Dance music], [Cat:Dance venues], ect.).

Each genre cat would then include articles representing the parent subject (Ballroom dance for [Cat: Ballroom dance]) as well as any articles relevant across the genre (for example, Dancesport for [Cat:Ballroom dance]).

Each genre cat would also include subcats for any major divisions/subgenres within the genre; so, [Cat:Latin ballroom dance] and [Cat:Standard/Smooth Ballroom dance] would both be subcats of [Cat:Ballroom dance], while [Cat:Ballet] would be a constituent of [Cat: Classical and concert dance].

At the lowest level of cat for any given branch -- be that a genre cat or subgenre cat within a genre cat -- we would add all articles which relate to that genre or subgenre at the most specific level at which they can be applied, including specific styles/dances (Cha-cha would be found in [Cat: Latin ballroom dance] and not in [Cat:Ballroom dance]), specific moves/techniques or compilation pages of such (Glossary of partner dance terms would be found in [Cat: Ballroom dance], while Gancho (dance move) would be found in [Cat:Latin Ballroom dance]; Glossary of ballet terminology would be found in [Cat:Ballet] and not in [Cat:Classical and concert dance]), specific dance personalities (List of professional ballroom dancers would go in [Cat: Ballroom dance], List of hip-hop choreographers would go in [Cat:hip-hop dance], and Fred Astaire would be listed in [Cat:Musical theatre and broadway dance]), equipment (Jazz shoe would go in [Cat:Jazz]), or any other topic which obviously belongs that genre/subgenre alone. At the lowest levels, we might make a handful of exceptions to the general rule of not having an article be linked in a cat another cat subordinate to the first; for example, I think it makes sense to link the article Ballet in [Cat:Classical and concert dance] next to Contemporary dance, Modern dance, and Lyrical dance as well as in [Cat:Ballet].

At some point briefly I will put together a sample tree to hopefully clarify the above structure some.Snow talk 09:04, 14 June 2014 (UTC) [reply ]

I'd like to work with other Wikipedians to establish notability guidelines for dance related content. Please let me know if you're interested in collaborating.Mwacha (talk) 16:01, 11 June 2014 (UTC) [reply ]

Hi! I'm hoping to work on this as well. Perhaps we can first create a 'Resources' section on the WikiProject Dance page that links to reliable, non-paywalled sources for dance references and/or other online dance Wikipedias where we can draw notability from(?) OR drohowa (talk) 18:35, 11 June 2014 (UTC) [reply ]

Hi! Also, examples of useful WikiProject resources that we could replicate are:

• Wikipedia:WikiProject Medicine/Resources
• Wikipedia:Identifying reliable sources (medicine)

A Reliable Resources section would be a very valuable asset indeed. Aside from its usefulness in the area of notability, it would really help editors (like me) who frequently encounter poorly stated--sometimes even obviously false--facts in dance articles, but can't correct them due to lack of RS. I'm not sure I can be of help building such a resource, but I would certainly make good use of it. Lambtron (talk) 19:21, 11 June 2014 (UTC) [reply ]

Hi, I saw OR drohowa's note on the ballet talk page. I'd be interested in this as well. I see this as an issue in the "former dancer" sections of ballet companies (ex: American Ballet Theatre#Former dancers). Clearly, not all former dancers should be listed or the section would take over the article. Which dancers, then, should be listed? Since ballet often uses its tradtional heirarchical model, as a starting point for ballet at least, I would suggest that dancers that reach the principal level or who leave the company and reach the principal level at another (major?) company should be listed, as well as those who go on to achieve similar distinction. Modern dance companies could use a parallel model. Dkreisst (talk) 19:30, 11 June 2014 (UTC) [reply ]

I tend to agree that many of the bios on American dancers lack sufficient notability. Nevertheless, it seems to me that from a global perspective there is still a huge amount of work to be done to cover all the current participants in the world dancing scene, not to mention historical players. My main concern is therefore to attract more editors to take a serious look at the overall picture and contribute to more and better coverage of ballet, modern dance and evolving trends. I'm always surprised to see how few of the budding stars reported in the press are documented on Wikipedia, whether in London, New York, Paris, Copenhagen, Berlin, Milan or Moscow. Let's keep our eyes open and try to give them all the credit they deserve.--Ipigott (talk) 20:47, 11 June 2014 (UTC) [reply ]

A notable dance company is composed of and thus bestows de facto notability upon its current members, whether they are independently notable or not. However, former dancers lose that automatic notability because they no longer contribute to the company's notability. Consequently, I'm in favor of deleting former dancers who are not independently notable. Lambtron (talk) 21:37, 11 June 2014 (UTC) [reply ]

But notability is not temporary. Are you suggesting that articles on dancers be eliminated upon their leaving dance companies? Coretheapple (talk) 21:41, 11 June 2014 (UTC) [reply ]

No. Articles on dancers are inherently articles about notable dancers, otherwise they would not have articles about them. I'm talking about dancers who are not independently notable, who do not have articles. Lambtron (talk) 21:48, 11 June 2014 (UTC) [reply ]

While I certainly take it as a good sign for this project, which often seems half-defunct, that people are seeing a need for this degree of discussion in dance articles, there's a a couple of points we need to be mindful of, setting out here. First off, in terms of outright policy, we can't establish arbitrary standards of notability of our own here for any article we perceive to be within the purview of our project; we have to solicit broad community input and that's going to be difficult with the relatively low degree of traffic and editor involvement we have across dance articles in general. Remember that there is a significant difference between a notability page that is an official guideline, such as WP:Notability (sports), which contains more stringent criteria that are applied on top of the minimum standards for notability found in WP:GNG and an essay constructed to provide the insight of a limited number of editors on how general notability standards can be applied to a given field or topic, but which applies no new refinements of notability standards that can be said to reflect broad community consensus. Moving from the latter to the former is not a small or quick project. None of which is saying that it can't be done, just that it's likely to be an uphill effort and it will be immeasurably helped if we are clear at the outset the basic types of standards that we can apply and expect support from the community and those that will be soundly rejected. All standards of notability must operate in concert with WP:V and WP:N and it's all going to come down to the sources. So some of the suggestions made above that we set notability to a standard of those who have attained a certain status within a company or association with certain companies, are untenable; first off because that approach is in direct conflict with the Wikipedia approach of establishing notability and weight via reliable sources rather than arbitrary standards of success and further because plenty of notable dance personalities and phenomena have no relationship to formal companies.

In general I have to say that, while we should always keep notability clearly in mind when authoring or evaluating dance articles, I don't see specific notability guidelines as our most pressing need right now. Frankly the biggest problem we have is at the other end of the proliferation spectrum as we have difficulty in that we have many subjects of deep significance for which we do not have articles (or have only poorly written articles), owing to a lack of quality reliable sources or editors to write the content; patrolling standards for non-notable articles taking root is a much smaller problem right now, by comparison anyway. Of course any kind of new community discussion to set standards would be helpful, if only in getting the members of this project and other editors of dance articles galvanized and motivated, but I tend to feel that the suggestions of Lambtron on compiling resources (in particular, those regarding reliable sources) and those of Ipigott as regard generally expanding the scope of our coverage to the many notable global dance influences which lack coverage (and attracting the necessary editor involvement to generate this content) are both great examples of where I think our priorities ought to be first if we are to make a genuine push within this project to structure and augment dance articles better. Notability standards will become central in all of that, of course, but I don't know if they are the ideal starting point. Though I should like to point out that I say this respectfully with regard to Mwacha, whose point is still very much valid and OR drohowa who has gone through a lot of effort to bring us here, through various means, to where we might finally begin to discuss the central issues which have limited this project and dance articles in general for some time now. Snow talk 00:37, 12 June 2014 (UTC) [reply ]

Notability is always an issue because it is the main point which decides whether or not an article is suitable for the wiki. Lack of accessible and reliable sources can be a big stumbling-point.
In dance, ballet is no problem. There are so many ballet encyclopedias and biographies and dictionaries that cover every stage of the art except the most recent period. Also, the dance correspondents of serious papers are usually former ballet dancers, and most of their reviews are of ballet. If there is a problem with our ballet articles, it is the way commentary on the music tends to overshadow discussion of the dance.
The problem of sources increase with other forms of dance. Some other forms of dance do get reviewed occasionally, for instance flamenco and kabuki, but are less well supplied with printed reference material. Lastly there are some forms of dance which are never reported in the main press, and which are never reviewed by the quality newspapers, and which have few printed sources, at least in the English language. Examples are international ballroom dancing, and quite a few of the south-east asian dance forms. In African dance even the idea of a named notable dancer is strange, so communal are the traditions. Macdonald-ross (talk) 07:45, 12 June 2014 (UTC) [reply ]

Many thanks to everyone for their responses and engagement with the topic! You make a lot of good points. I agree, Snow Rise, that the lack of reliable resources and editors, as well as a general lack of coverage of dance content is a huge issue. I'd like to think that establishing notability guidelines will give new editors (and editors new to dance!) a solid foundation with which to approach the topic. OR drohowa and I envision this as the first step in a greater movement.

When the International Encyclopedia of Dance, the first multivolume encyclopedia, was published in the late '90s, the editors chose not to cover many dancers. This was done for a number of reasons, and I imagine the space limitations of a print publication was one of them -- a limitation we are not subject to. In addition to dancers, I'd also like to address notability guidelines for choreographers, performance companies, etc. Is this best done on wiki or off? Mwacha (talk) 15:28, 17 June 2014 (UTC) [reply ]

• I agree that the lack of coverage of dance is pretty distressing. We have so much junk on Wikipedia, so many self-serving articles about unimportant companies and idiotic video games. But important dancers and choreographers often get short-shrift. Just to pick up on one point, as I was away for a few days: if a dancer has an article because he or she belongs to a particular dance company, and then leaves the company or retires, the article remains. Notability is not temporary. Also it seems kind of cruel, wouldn't you say? Their careers are over, and they even lose their Wiki article. Ouch. Coretheapple (talk) 17:45, 17 June 2014 (UTC) [reply ]

I may be mistaken but I don't think anyone has proposed deleting articles about notable dancers. A dancer who has his/her own article is independently notable -- that's a fundamental tenet of WP:N. And as you pointed out, notability is not temporary, therefore notable dancers continue to be notable regardless of what they do later in life. I think the original question was about dancers who do not have their own articles, who are merely named as members in company articles and do not warrant having their own articles. Should those dancers continue to be listed as "former members" in company articles? Lambtron (talk) 19:05, 17 June 2014 (UTC) [reply ]

Oh OK, I misunderstood. No, I don't see why they have to be listed as former members, unless they are notable. By that, I mean either they have an article but are redlinked but likely to have one. Coretheapple (talk) 21:47, 17 June 2014 (UTC) [reply ]

May I suggest that dance is so underrepresented on Wikipedia that instead of spending time debating notability we make use of it to develop articles? — Robert Greer (talk) 04:42, 9 July 2014 (UTC) [reply ]

Not to butt in, but if it's underrepresented, then this might be of interest... Dancing with the Stars request for deletion.

I've posted a query about coverage of the overall topic at WT:WikiProject Theatre#Dance theater. Any thoughts there would be most welcome. Cheers, 86.134.203.235 (talk) 10:59, 20 January 2015 (UTC) The discussion there follows below: Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Theatre#Dance theater [reply ]

Am just working on a quick article for Ben Sommers and I keep seeing references to regional ballet. This sounds like something that ought to have an article on it but I know nothing about ballet (the only reason I'm doing Sommers is because of his fashion links) so I thought I'd raise it here as it sounded like something missing from Wikipedia. Mabalu (talk) 10:20, 20 April 2015 (UTC) [reply ]

Hi,

Just to let you know - Igor Stravinsky is missing from the topic 'Ballet Composers'. Quite an important man to miss out!

Grace 81.110.230.64 (talk) 11:19, 10 May 2015 (UTC) [reply ]

The importance of the dance teacher cannot be underestimated. Tracing the "family tree" of dancers is of utmost importance.

For example, Benjamin Millepied was mentored by Jerome Robbins, who in turn learnt ballet with Ella Daganova, Antony Tudor and Eugene Loring. Eugene Loring was coached by Balanchine, who was the student of Pavel Gerdt. Gerdt was the student of Christian Johansson, Alexander Pimenov (himself a pupil of the legendary Charles Didelot), and with Jean-Antoine Petipa and so on.

Now, all the information is in Wikipedia, but it's not in the infobox. I think that making this information quickly accessible using the infobox is an important tool for people trying to learn about dance styles, influences, dance history, and more.

Would it make sense to add a Teacher/Mentor (any other suggestion?) field to the Infobox dancer template? This will enable users to quickly move up the chain of "dance teachers". It would be immensely useful to users. How does one go about this? Thanks!

Masala Dosa (talk) 09:24, 27 May 2015 (UTC) [reply ]

Masala Dosa, I'm not saying it's impossible (noting this kind of mentor relationship makes more sense for dancers than it does a lot of other types artist or professional) but there are a lot of potential problems here with regard to weight and original research. It's for these reasons that over the last few years there have been a number of discussions at template talk:infobox person which reached a consensus that "influences/influenced by" parameters should mostly be avoided in infoboxes, since they tend to attract a lot of unsourced fancruft and even when they are verifiable, they are often better contextualized in the prose of the article's main body. That situation has since rippled out and mostly been implemented in other discussions for infoboxes on performers (see for example the recent discussion at Template_talk:Infobox_comedian#request for comment and its more or less unanimous conclusion). But, all of that said, I can see an argument for going the other direction here (dance has a famously strong standard relationship between teacher and pupil), though I must admit I am of two minds on the matter myself. Snow ^{let's rap} 23:23, 14 July 2015 (UTC) [reply ]

I happen to be the son of Virginia Myers. And it's only been about a year and a half since a box in an art storage room was opened and we discovered a vast collection of clippings, pictures, newspaper and magazine reviews, letters, essays, poems, etc. about a very young dancer who became quite famous in New York City in the early 20th century. Starting at the age of four, and by the age of 5 she had become so well-known that the Edison Film Company found out about her and signed her to a contract to star in their 1,000th feature release titled the "The Dream Dances of Virginia Myers." It was released to all the Edison movie theaters in America as well as numerous other venues around the world.

I've done two articles in the past for Wikipedia, one focusing on Virgina's famous artist father, Jerome Myers, and another on his wife, another fine artist, Ethel Myers. This time I think a son who is not really an expert on dance or its history, should take a back seat, and let someone who really knows about the dance world and is not a blood relative take on the subject. It certainly seems like a much wiser choice. I did actually co-produce and write a major gala at Lincoln Center paying tribute to Fred Astaire, which included meetings with him in Hollywood to discuss what films we would be using (and why he still didn't like his singing that much). Anyway, the show was a huge success and Astaire said himself "it was the greatest evening he had ever had in his life." Ginger Rogers was there, and Fred's famous sister, Adele, also came. She was an extraordinary talent in her own right and during their performing days together always got the better reviews.

Anyway, had I known about what my mother had achieved on the New York stage around the same time that Fred and Adele were doing shows, I would have certainly mentioned her to him. He might well have known about her; might possibly have even seen her perform. It so happened I did invite my mother to the Gala and did introduce her to Fred, but not knowing anything about the past.

Possibly the best way to introduce yourself to who she was is to visit the Internet site I did create for her. It contains almost all the publicity and documentation that is now part of the permanent Virginia Myers Collection at "The Jerome Robbins Dance Library at Lincoln Center". Here is the link: [1].

I'm not sure how to follow up on this note. My email address is barry@ques.com. My telephone in New York City is 212-734-7280. Thank you for reviewing this.

Barry

BEDownes (talk) 23:02, 30 May 2015 (UTC) [reply ]

BEDownes, I've looked through the website some and there does seem to be a wealth of material here. It is quite reasonable and appropriate for you to want to avoid getting too directly involved in the potential creation of the article yourself, given the potential conflict of interests involved, and looking at it as a neutral party myself, I have to say it's a complex case. On the one hand, as you probably know from your previous Wikipedia experiences, we have WP:Notability guidelines which determine when a given topic (including an individual) warrant and independent article on the project, and this determination is primarily made on the basis of the sources and outside materials available. In this case, there seems to be a fair bit of material to work with, but the fact that it is so dated and that your mother's legacy did not make it into more contemporary coverage of the era of dance she featured in complicates things some, because it means our vital secondary sourcing is limited here. Furthermore, we'd need to find at least some record of reference to her work in the archives for some media source, in order to confirm their publication status (it seems unfeasible that someone could/would flub that amount of material as is found on that site for such a purpose, but it's a simple matter of procedure here to confirm these things). I will look into this matter in detail and if there is any indication that we have the necessary sourcing to add an article on your mother and her work, I'll be happy to assist you in the creation of the article. However, as my editing time is limited at present, this could take some time (probably on the order of weeks or possibly even months, as it may require significant research on limited time). In the meantime, others here may decide to take the lead and expedite things. For now, my thanks for approaching this project in a smart fashion and all the best to you and your family! Snow ^{let's rap} 23:52, 14 July 2015 (UTC) [reply ]

Misty Copeland could use a reviewer at WP:PR.--TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 03:22, 6 August 2015 (UTC) [reply ]

I've recently spent some time expanding the Sandman Sims article from its former stub status to a full, referenced article. I removed the {{stub}} template from the article itself, but {{WikiProject Dance| class=stub| importance=low}} is still on the article's talk page, and I wasn't sure what the procedure is for modifying that template. (I'd also appreciate someone with expertise in dance looking the article over for terminology errors, as I am neither a dancer nor an expert in the field.) Thanks in advance! —GrammarFascist (talk) 16:38, 5 September 2015 (UTC) [reply ]

1. Thank you all to all our editors who help to contribute to Quality improvement efforts on Wikipedia related to WP:DANCE.
2. I've helped to clear the entire GA Review backlog for Media and drama, which can be seen at Wikipedia:Good article nominations/Topic lists/Media and drama.
3. I'd like to make a suggestion, here, which is optional, for you to please consider:
4. Suggestion: This suggestion is optional only, but I ask you to please at least read over the Good Article review instructions , and consider reviewing two to three (2-3) GA candidates from good articles nominations, for each one (1) that you nominate. Again, this is optional and a suggestion only, but please do familiarize yourself at least with how to review, and then think about it -- as a way to pay it forward .

Thank you,

— Cirt (talk) 06:43, 18 October 2015 (UTC) [reply ]

Archived some old threads that were inactive, zero new responses, those that referred to closed AFDs, etc. — Cirt (talk) 06:55, 18 October 2015 (UTC) [reply ]

Please comment at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Satu Tuomisto. The AfD has been open for two weeks with no input. Thank you. Jbh ^Talk 16:19, 31 October 2015 (UTC) [reply ]

Fyi, WT:PSYCH#Kinesthetic sympathy. 81.157.0.217 (talk) 14:46, 6 November 2015 (UTC) (occasionally aka "dance ip")[reply ]

How is this related to dance? Lambtron (talk) 15:50, 6 November 2015 (UTC) [reply ]

[2] [3] (though obviously it isn't only related to dance). 81.157.0.217 (talk) 16:12, 6 November 2015 (UTC) [reply ]

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