Does Utah Actually Have A Lot Of Dancers?

Data on Utah Dancers in honor of the Dancing with the Stars Finale

Introduction

My wife is a Dancing with the Stars fan - where uncoordinated celebrities pair up with a professional dancer and compete against each other. The show has seen notable success and is now on their 33rd season. This season’s finale is coming this Tuesday, November 26th, 2024 and 4 of the 5 remaining professional dancers are from Utah with Mormon upbringings.

This reminded me of my experience at BYU with friends participating in the many dance classes and competing dance teams. In fact, more than one of my friends from BYU now dances professionally.

So, what’s the deal with Mormons, Utah, and dancing? Is there something there? Are there more dancers/dance studios in Utah?

Charts

Dancing with the Stars Facts

First, let’s look at profiles of the professional dancers on Dancing with the Stars. There are plenty of other places professionals dance, but let’s specifically look at the show in honor of the finale. To date, there have been 52 professional dancers - 12 of which are from Utah (23%). The next closest state was California with only 3 dancers. Nearly 1 in 4 for Utah is strong representation.

Credit goes to my wife for looking up every dancer, where they are from, and how many followers they have.

To my surprise, after dancers from North America, there is strong representation from Eastern Europe on the show (Russia’s 10 is included in that number). From Oceania, Australia had the most dancers.

Not only are there more Utah dancers than any other state or country, but the Utah dancers are disproportionally more popular.

Note, of course, this is looking at all dancers past and present. For example, Julianne Hough is now a host and Derek Hough a judge.

Official Regional Employment of Dancers

I tried to find data on the number of dance studios by state, but all of these lists were behind paywalls. So if someone wants to give me $200, I’ll tell you how many dance studios there are by state 😂.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics however provides some information on the job outlook of dancers including a state-by-state breakdown.

It describes dancers as the following: “Perform dances. May perform on stage, for broadcasting, or for video recording.”

As you can see above, Utah is 1 of 9 states that employs the most dancers in the US. The most dancers are employed in California, Nevada, Florida, and New York. However, the population of most of these states are considerably larger than Utah’s (Nevada is actually slightly lower, but what kind of dancers are employed in Vegas 🤔). So, for Utah to make the top 9 is significant.

When we look at “Location Quotient“ which controls for population size, Utah is in the Top 4. This means that there is a high concentration of dancing jobs in Utah and better job prospects for dancers than most all states. With more dancers and dance jobs, its not too far of a stretch to say that Utah also likely has more dance studios and dance schools than most other states.

Conclusion

So, what is my conclusion? I think dancing and Utah are definitely connected. Though not as many jobs as arts hubs in California, Nevada, or New York, Utah is a top place for dance job prospects, and its not a fluke or surprising that so many professional dancers on Dancing with the Stars are from there.