About the rec.arts.dance newsgroup and others like it.

What other dance-related newsgroups are there?

Newsgroups are in several hierarchies. The big eight are the groups that start with comp, news, misc, rec, talk, sci, soc, humanities. These can be assumed to be on any system that receives news, and for such a group to be created involves a voting process that gives it some legitimacy. Groups starting with alt, on the other hand, can be created (or deleted) on a whim. Hence your system may not carry all of them. (The story is actually a bit more complicated. Read various files on news.newusers.questions , and alt.config .) Even groups in the rec hierarchy need not be on all systems, since some sysadmins frown upon such frivolous topics.

Henry Neeman's hotlist has a section with dance-related newsgroups: http://zeus.ncsa.uiuc.edu:8080/~hneeman/dance_hotlist.html#newsgroups .

Dance groups

rec.folk-dancing
Any discussion of folk dancing. Areas of dance would include, but not be limited to: international, contra, square, western square, morris, cajun, and barn dancing, etc.
alt.arts.ballet
An offshoot of rec.arts.dance. The ballet and jazz folks wanted to weed out the ballroom discussion and went on to form alt.arts.ballet. Some people don't have access to the alt hierarchy so there still is residual ballet discussion in rec.arts.dance.

Music groups

See also the section on salsa and latin dance: (5.6)

rec.music.afro-latin
Lots of information about Salsa, Cumbia, et cetera. Mostly about music, but regularly about dancing.
rec.music.country.western
More of a music forum than a dancing forum.
rec.music.ragtime
Another music forum, but the charter allows for dances that go with ragtime music, such as vintage dances.
alt.music.dance
This is not about dancing but about what's called Dance Music, nowadays. Techno pop and all that. A lot of it actually makes for solid, if rather peppy, hustle music.
alt.music.makers.dj
Should be clear what it is about. Not exactly about dancing, but I'm listing it, since it may be of interest to some dancers.
alt.music.polka
Not widely spread. The discussion is mostly about polka music (in particular recordings) and musicians, but polka dancing is discussed occasionally.

Non-english language groups

de.rec.sport.tanzen
A German language group about dancing.
fj.rec.dance
Japanese.

Does anyone archive newsgroup postings?

Old newsgroup posting for (practically) all newsgroups are kept at the following location: http://dejanews.com/ . A similar site is Alta Vista http://www.altavista.digital.com/ which in addition can do a keyword search on web pages.

This file is part of the FAQ list for the newsgroup rec.arts.dance. The FAQ list is being maintained by Victor Eijkhout (victor at eijkhout dot net, talk about vanity), who appreciates being sent additions or corrections on the material in this collection. Copyright 1994/5/6/7/8/9/2000 lies with the maintainer and the contributors of various parts.

Listen up: Victor did not write most of this stuff; he just collected it. So don't send him any dance questions.

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Last modified on: Saturday, October 9, 1999.