But yeah, getting into lindy hop 15 years ago was literally the best thing that ever happened to me. It's incredible, being able to go to any major city on the planet and instantly finding a community.
I agree completely. I do salsa and every time I travel (which was a lot pre covid) I would look up dance venues and you're always guaranteed a great time. It's also amazing how diverse the salsa community is, there are people from 20 to 80 of all social and ethical backgrounds dancing with each other (I saw similar things in the swing community when I tried it out)
The English country dance tradition in the USA evolved into contradance (corruption of "country dance"). It diverged in the 18th century when English country dances were almost entirely longways dances, so there are only a few squares formations left, almost vestigial. Then in English the whole explosion when the quadrille arrived from France and began hybridizing with English country dance happened, and then the waltz... Meanwhile in the USA, contradance continued on without that influence. Though they later picked up the waltz, and a contradance today conventionally ends each half of the dance with a waltz, the first of which you conventionally dance with someone not your significant other and the second you dance with your significant other if you have one.
Contradance is where I tend to start totally new dancers. The community tends to be extremely welcoming. Most dances have an expectation that experienced dancers will spend at least part of the evening dancing with newcomers and trying to get them up to speed and comfortable. Once they've got the sense of weight and motion, then you can drag them off to swing, ballroom, or whatever else, but it really is an incredibly effective setting for instilling some fundamentals and confidence.
It's also interesting because you can go from Virginia to Washington state and walk into a contradance and wonder if you traveled at all.
Contra is now pretty popular amongst folkies in the UK (well, England, anyway). Ceilidh (around the UK) is the wander-in-and-give-it-a-go thing, less taxing and more energetic than contra, and should be very welcoming and age-blind. (Less chance of throwing a whole set if you get it wrong, and typically less intricate.) I guess with most genres you'd feel at home joining in somewhere else.
The big long festival of folk dance/music in England should have been happening from this weekend. There's plenty of video of Sidmouth Folk Week on youtube^Winvidio.us if anyone's interested, though more of the displays than the social dancing.