[1]Granovetter, M. (1978). “Threshold Models of Collective Behavior”. American Journal of Sociology 83 (6): 1420–1443.

 http://pancocojams.blogspot.com/2012/05/rufus-thomas-crowd-control-at-wattstax.html

The featured video for this post reminds me somewhat of this 1972 video of Rufus Thomas’ performance at Wattstax: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-y08rACjwM8&feature=relatedRufus Thomas – Do the Funky Chicken
In this video a very large crowd of young African American males & females are shown coming down from the stands and dancing on the football field with  Rufus Thomas’ permission. 

There are several YouTube videos of this performance, but I chose this longer one because I’m very impressed by Thomas’ ability to get the dancers’ to return back to their seats in the stands. He did so  by appealing to Black unity, and their humor [by saying one liners]. The video shows one Black man who refused to go back to his seat, and Rufus finally asked some attendees to go get him off the field. They did so without any violence. Watching that entire scene, one of my thoughts was that it’s doubtful that any performer would dare to do that nowadays, nor would the concert producers/security let them. 

Also- not that it matters- but I probably would be one of the attendees who remained seated in the stands rather than part of the crowd who went down to show off their dancing skills. But when there’s so many people dancing, maybe it doesn’t matter how well you dance. Maybe being able to let yourself go and enjoy the act of dancing is as important as being able to dance well… 

I think that video has little or nothing to do with the point being made by this post, but I thought that readers here might also enjoy it. The Rufus Thomas part of the concert ends at 8:09. Right afterwards comedian Richard Pryor is interviewed & uses the n word. For the record, I regret that portion of the video, but I’m sure the readers here can ignore that if they want to in order to view the video of Rufus Thomas and the dancers.

If a lone person starts hardcore dancing in the middle of the venue, maybe ze’s just weird or would dance to anything (even bad music).  It takes a few people, especially people who look/seem popular, to start hardcore dancing before others will join in.

I believe this is partially because of your explanation above, that inhibition or lack thereof comes into play.  And there’s also an element of unfamiliarity in that, as you also mentioned, people are less likely to dance to something they don’t know, even if it’s awesomely danceable.  In my local hardcore metal scene, though (and maybe it’s similar with DJ-ing), there’s also an element of “coolness.”  Not just whether the people are cool (which is tied to inhibition), but whether the music is cool enough to dance to.  And if enough people (as I mentioned before, especially popular/attractive/well-known-in-the-scene people) join in, others seem to feel the music has a sort of “stamp of approval” and are usually more likely to dance.

And it really takes off when enough of the crowd forms the protective circle and extends their fists out into the middle for the dancers to bump against as they charge backward.  That makes it a really interesting mix of dynamics, because if you mess up or look silly trying to hardcore dance, there’s a whole group of people watching.  But if you look awesome or pull off a nice move, well… there’s a whole group of people watching.

(Incidentally, I remember my brother standing in his living room, demonstrating to me what hardcore dancing looks like.  I was sure he was trolling me until I went to his first concert.)

The other thing that distinguishes dancing from Facebook (besides the obvious, anyway) is that the dance floor gets too crowded.  Past a certain point, more dancers make the dance floor less fun and useful, because you can’t move nearly as much without hitting someone and you’re more likely to end up in a weird spot (I always seem to end up in some odd little space beside a pillar). 

Now, that’s assuming that you’re going dancing predominantly to dance – I imagine it’s rather different in scenes where the purpose of dancing is predominantly to hook up/make out on the dance floor, because then crowding would be a plus, as it would provide more potential partners, more of an audience should you wish to  show off and also more cover should you wish to be discreet.

I mean, it definitely is a network effect, but subsuming that under the sign of “value” seems to me to make value meaningless, or to turn us all into calculating Benthamites – “this dancefloor is more valuable to me now that more people are there because I value the disinhibitory effect of the larger crowd, which provides me with greater utility as I am no longer embarrassed to dance”.

Is the value of dancing linked to the number of other people dancing?