Dancing transcends borders and cultures. While every country has its own unique dances that incorporate heritage, values, and traditions, have you ever wondered if any countries share the same national dances?

It turns out that out of the 289 unique national dances represented among 131 countries, some dances are shared by multiple nations.

Let’s put on our dancing shoes and explore the 18 national dances that are represented by more than one country. From Ardah, the most widely-practiced dance, to the traditional Al-Bar’ah in Oman and Yemen, we’ll take a closer look at the types of dances and which countries share them. Finally, we’ll take a look at the state dances throughout the U.S.—especially one very common dance that involves a shape. Yeehaw!

View National dances in a full screen map

The 18 National Dances Shared by Multiple Countries

Although there are 289 unique national dances represented among the 131 countries, there are a total of 313 dances. This means that some national dances are shared by more than one country. So let’s take a look at which dances are represented by multiple countries.

Dance	# of countries with this dance	Countries
Ardah	5	Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates
Dabke	4	Jordan, Lebanon, Palestine, Syria
Quadrille	3	Bahamas, Jamaica, Virgin Islands
Tango	2	Argentina, Uruguay
Sousta	2	Cyprus, Greece
Shota	2	Albania, Kosovo
Rake-and-scrape	2	Bahamas, Turks and Caicos
Pericón	2	Argentina, Uruguay
Peacock dance	2	Bangladesh, Cambodia
Liwa	2	Bahrain, Kuwai
Ländler	2	Austria, Switzerland
Kwadril	2	Dominica, Saint Lucia
Kurdish dance	2	Iran, Iraq
Khaleegy	2	Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates
Irish stepdance	2	Ireland, United Kingdom
Hora	2	Moldova, Romania
Bhangra	2	India, Pakistan
Al-Bar’ah	2	Oman, Yemen

As you can see from the table above, Ardah is the most widely practiced dance. It’s performed by two rows of men wielding swords or canes opposite each other, accompanied by drums and spoken poetry. Middle Eastern countries make up all five for which Ardah is a national dance. The second-most common dance, Dabke, is nearly as popular in Middle Eastern countries. It involves a mix of circle and line dancing and is widely performed at weddings and other joyous occasions.

More than just a region sharing the same dances, some are performed in two countries with similar cultural backgrounds or geographical proximity. For example, both Ardah and Liwa, a dance in which male participants arrange themselves into a circle while clapping and dancing in place, are performed in Bahrain and Kuwait, neighboring countries with shared cultural roots. Similarly, Shota is performed in both Albania and Kosovo, which are located in the same region of Europe, and the Kurdish dance is performed in both Iran and Iraq, two countries that share a border.

Check out the rest of the dances on the map before moving on to their classification, from folk to traditional and classical.

Folk Dances & More Types

Even if countries don’t share the same dance, quite a few have something else in common: types. Moreover, the following 10 are the types of at least two national dances.

• Folk dance: 225
• Traditional dance: 41
• Classical dance: 9
• Partner dance: 7
• Music and dance style: 6
• Popular dance: 6
• Square dance: 5
• Native American dance: 3
• Afro-Brazilian dance: 2
• Latin American dance: 2

Folk dances, which reflect the life of the people of the country or region, are by far the most common type, with 225 instances across 98 countries. Examples include the Israeli folk dance, India’s Garba, and the Marma dance in Bangladesh, along with Armenia’s Armenian dance and Shalakho.

Meanwhile, traditional dances are the second most common type, with 41 instances, including Al-Bar’ah in Oman and Yemen, the Chinese ​​dragon dance, and Napal’s Newa dance.

You’ll also find multiple classical, partner, popular, and music and dance style dances on the map. Other less common types of national dances are Native American, Latin American, and Afro-Brazilian dances.

But we can’t forget square dancing, which is the type of national dance of five countries, including many states in the U.S.

How Square Dancers Campaigned in the U.S.

While not on the map, we thought we’d dive further into the most popular state dances of the United States—or should we say, dance.

Just 33 U.S. states have dance data, according to Wikipedia. Of these, 24 (or nearly 73%) are square dances: Alabama, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Georgia, Idaho, Illinois, Louisiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, Mississippi, Missouri, Nebraska, New Jersey, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Oregon, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia, and Washington. This is a result of an apparent campaign by square dancers to make it the national dance of many states in the ‘70s.

Other than square dancing, the shag and clogging are more common than the rest. Specifically, the shag is the national dance of South Carolina while in North Carolina, the official popular dance is the Carolina shag. Clogging is representative of both North Carolina and Kentucky.

For more national statistics, don’t miss our maps of the 317 national foods, national drinks, animals,
sports, and flowers and trees.

Contrary to its name, ghost towns aren’t just really spooky places. They are actually abandoned villages, towns, or cities that often contain visible remaining—albeit neglected—buildings and roads.

So how does a once-flourishing location become such a place? Ghost towns are typically created when the industries or agriculture that supported them fail or come to an end due to natural or human-caused disasters such as floods, droughts, extreme weather, pollution, or war. The term may also include areas that have become significantly depopulated over time, such as those affected by high levels of unemployment and neglect.

Once-bustling places that are now empty make us curious. As a result, some ghost towns have become tourist attractions, such as Bannack, Montana. You’ll find that and the 4,530 other U.S. ghost towns you can find on the map below, and details about these ghost towns’ current statuses, common names, and locations in the following post.

View Ghost Towns in a full screen map

Statuses of Deserted Towns

The U.S.’s 4,531 ghost towns are just that: abandoned villages, towns, or cities. But while they all have this classification in common, their statuses differ. From barren or semi-abandoned places to sparsely populated areas and those that are fully submerged, we’re going to highlight the most common of those now:

Status	# of Ghost Towns
Barren	211
Neglected	119
Town with residual population	102
Abandoned	97
Semi-abandoned	69
Historic	57
D — Area is sparsely populated and may boast period structures (of varied physical condition) and/or a cemetery, but no operative town proper.	47
Submerged	46
A — No apparent remains of former settlement exist. In some cases, site may be marked and/or contain a cemetery.	37
Inhabited	34

As you can see from the table above, barren ghost towns are the most common type. Other popular statuses teeter on the verge of being ghost towns: like the 102 towns with residual populations, the 69 that are semi-abandoned, inhabited, and the sparsely populated areas that may boast period structures (of varied physical condition) and/or cemeteries, but no operative town propers.

Perhaps the most interesting are the 46 ghost towns that are submerged. Most of these (14) are located in ​​Pennsylvania, including Cokeville, Fillmore, Livermore, and Social Hall, which are all under the waters of Conemaugh River Lake. Wilsonville was intentionally flooded to create Lake Wallenpaupack—similar to a plot line in the TV show Ozark. Another submerged town, Somerfield, remained hidden under the waters of Youghiogheny River Lake until 1999 when receding water levels began to reveal parts of the town.

While the stories of ghost towns are similar, their stories are all unique. But the same can’t be said for their names.

Center Point, Wilson, and Other Common Ghost Town Names

As is so often the case, there are quite a few shared names among the 4,531 ghost towns. So let’s take a look at the names shared by more than four ghost towns.

• Center Point: 7 ghost towns
• Clifton: 5
• Hopewell: 5
• Wilson: 5
• Alma: 4
• Aurora: 4
• Benton: 4
• Boston: 4
• Carpenter: 4
• Corwin: 4
• Elizabethtown: 4
• Eureka: 4
• Hamilton: 4
• Keystone: 4
• Lexington: 4
• Liberty: 4
• Midway: 4
• Millville: 4
• Pioneer: 4
• Pittsburg: 4
• Providence: 4
• Silver City: 4
• Victoria: 4

Center Point is the most common ghost town name. All seven of the towns that share this name are located in Texas, though in varying counties.

Interestingly, Hopewell—not Hope nor Hopes— is another popular name throughout multiple states. There’s a Hopewell in Florida, Mississippi, and Tennessee—and two in Missouri… three if you could the ghost town named Hopewell Furnace. And while not as common as Hopewell, there is a Hope in both Nebraska and Oklahoma.

Ghost towns named Wilson are equally as popular as Hopewell, with five throughout Florida, Illinois, Maryland, and Michigan. Though, if you were to count the number of Wilsonvilles along with Wilsons, it would be one more.

Meanwhile, 61 other names are shared by three ghost towns, including Dogtown, Empire, and Ruby. Further, 291 ghost town names apply to two each while the remaining 3,668 others have unique names.

Be sure to check out the rest of the common ghost town names on the map above, because we’re moving on to their locations.

The Most Abandoned Towns Are Located in These 10 States

Each of the 50 U.S. states has at least one ghost town—though with 4,531 total, some states are clearly home to more than one. Let’s look at which states have the most abandoned towns, using Heat View.

With more than four thousand markers on the map, all in the same country, the points can start to overlap, losing their ability to tell a useful story. This is where Heat View can be beneficial, as it exposes marker density.

The Lone Star State appears to be home to the most ghost towns: 550, to be exact. Over 30 are located in Wilson County, specifically, while Guadalupe, Presidio, Washington, Gillespie, and Bexar counties all have 10+.

Oklahoma, Kansas, California, Florida, and South Dakota are each home to more than 240 ghost towns, while Pennsylvania, Colorado, Wisconsin, and Utah all have ghost towns in the hundreds.

Find Your Nearest Ghost Town

Use the search box in the ghost town map to enter a U.S. city, zip code, or address. The map will find your nearest ghost town, so you can begin exploring the past.

Alternatively, you might want something a little more populated… The opposite of a ghost town is a boom town! For the biggest boomtowns of every U.S. state, check out our map.

Whether you’re a business owner or employee, you have enough on your plate. You don’t want the collection and storage of your sales leads to remain yet another undone task on your to-do list. This is why you’re interested in incorporating Airtable—a spreadsheet-database hybrid—into your workflow.

Airtable pairs a spreadsheet with database column types along with calendar, gallery, Kanban, and other views, which makes it perfect for storing leads.

Moreover, once you have your lead base set up, you can use the information to identify nearby leads to use during sales travel.

Let’s get started building an Airtable base for leads, automating the collection, and exporting the data to find your closest lead.

1. Build an Airtable Base for Leads

Before we can identify our closest lead(s), we must first build our base. You may already have them stored, so look below to make sure you have all the fields you need. If you’re just starting out, let’s begin with the basics. Within Airtable, select Add a base (or use one of the many available Airtable templates). Give your new base a name, “Leads.”

With that done, we can focus on making our base lead-specific. We’ll start with column headings, called fields. By default, things like Name, Notes, and Attachments appear in any new base.

But you can also add your own. Some basic suggestions include:

• Email
• Company name
• First name
• Last name
• Phone number
• City
• State
• Address

You can incorporate even more specific fields such as lead stage, priority, expected close date, or last contact, just to name a few. When it comes to finding your nearest leads, perhaps the most important of these are the location-related fields. Of course, yours needn’t be so U.S.-focused. Just be sure to include some location data, such as country, latitude and longitude, etc.

Now we can either fill all in the details for each new record manually or…

2. Automate Lead Collection with a Form

We can use forms to automate the collection of the information we need. We needn’t do much to incorporate a form into the workflow we’ve already built with our base since Airtable uses your base fields to pre-populate your form.

Let’s jump into it:

• In the Views tab of your base, select Form
• Click the fields to edit the pre-populated information
• Here you can add additional text to clarify the field in your form
• You can also opt to set conditions for when to show certain fields, make them required, or remove fields from your form altogether

There are more ways to customize your form (logos, cover images, etc.), especially if you have a paid account. You can even share your form among team members so that everyone working in sales can add the new leads they discover.

Now that we’ve built our base and created a form to automate lead collection, we can dive into finding the nearest lead to our current location.

3. Create a Custom Map of Your Airtable Leads

View Airtable Leads in a full screen map

If your lead base doesn’t contain exact locations like addresses or latitude and longitude coordinates, it might make sense to just sort your base by city, state, or country to find which lead is closest to your location.

But if you have access to more specific location data, or you just want a way to identify your closest leads on the go, mapping your points may be your best bet.
There are two ways to do so in Airtable, as we discussed in a previous post.

Because the first involves many steps, including obtaining a Google Maps API Key, we’ll go over the second option:

• Ensure the location information in your Airtable base has its own single line text fields
• Click Grid view and select Download CSV
• Open your web browser and navigate to batchgeo.com
• Drag and drop your downloaded file to the location data box, then click Map Your Data and watch as the geocoder performs its process
• Check to make sure you have the proper location data fields available under “Validate and Set Options”
• Select Show Advanced Options to customize marker labels, colors, shapes, and map styles
• After any updates, click Make Map. When you’re done, Save & Continue
  • Optional: link your Airtable base in the Description, then click Save Map

Yet, we don’t have to stop here. While you can access your new map on your phone, which is already more helpful than a table full of addresses for seeing locations while traveling, you needn’t just estimate the map location closest to you at any given time.

Search or Measure Your Nearest Lead

Our last step is to pinpoint exactly which lead is closest to us using our map.

Using the Search bar in the upper right-hand corner of our map, enter your current address or the address of the hotel you’re staying at during your trip. When you press Enter on your keyboard, the nearest point on our map will pop up, taking away the guesswork of eyeballing it from the map—or worse—from your Airtable base.

Map your Airtable base today at batchgeo.com.