[Callers] Shadow Swing Disclaimers?

Tue Sep 8 10:30:06 PDT 2015

Maia,

Let me see if I'm correctly reading your goals:
You want to call dances with shadow swings
You want to minimize discomfort

To do both of those, I think an announcement after folks have lined up is
worse than an announcement earlier. If someone is uncomfortable with the
idea of swinging a shadow, how comfortable would they be leaving a line
after you've made the announcement and highlighting for everyone in the
room that there's a problematic interaction? There's no way to
surreptitiously drop out; folks have to take new hands four and identify
new shadows. I think making the announcement after folks have lined up just
puts public pressure on your dancers.

You can announce it ahead of time, either at the end of the previous dance;
or even during the walkthrough of the previous dance. I know some callers
do this for mixers: "Alright, thanks everyone for lining up and taking
hands four. Just so you know, the dance after this will be a mixer. You'll
keep your partner for this dance, but the one after don't expect to stay
with your sweetheart." etc. Andrea raises a good point that it's hard to
know where the shadow would be when you line up (or if someone lines up
after you).

Other options that come to mind:

   - Call these dances that are dear to you only in instances where it's
   unlikely to be an issue. I.e. small dance communities where you know
   everyone and know it'll be fine; or very large events (dance weekends, etc)
   where it's much less likely for you to run into someone you have a bad
   interaction with. If you had a festival session called "Shadow Dances";
   then anybody showing up is probably going to expect that they'll swing the
   occasional shadow.
   - As Ron suggested, you can modify the dance and say "and this move can
   be a swing". Might defeat why you're trying to call the dance though.
   - Make it triplet-esque; in that rather than full long lines, you break
   folks into small groups (10 dancers, etc) and run the dance for a short
   time. If there's a shadow, partner, and neighbor swing, chances are you
   don't want to run the dance super long anyway. You announce "find a partner
   and about 4 other couples for a special dance" and folks can self select a
   little more. Smaller groups also let more experienced dancers
   goof/chaos/play more with repetitive dances without throwing off large
   portions of the hall (I consider a dance with shadow & partner swing, with
   or without a neighbor swing; to have a high possibility of repetitiveness).

Hope that helps get you thinking about other options too. Have fun, and
remember we're there for the dancers to have a good time.
Luke

On Tue, Sep 8, 2015 at 11:06 AM, Maia McCormick via Callers <
callers at lists.sharedweight.net> wrote:

> Hey all,
>
> First, a disclaimer: Some people on this listserv thing shadow swings are
> problematic. Some don't see any issue with them. This is NOT the
> conversation I want to have in this thread; *I ask that you respond to
> the question I'm asking and do not debate my premise--at least not in this
> particular thread. *This should help keep this thread on track and
> hopefully reduce excess noise and go-nowhere discussions on this listserv.
> Thanks!
>
> Anyway, the actual question I wanted to ask (whew!)--
>
> There do exist some really fabulous shadow-swing dances that I would love
> to be able to call, as long as I could do so without putting anyone in an
> uncomfortable position. Do folks have ideas for ways to mitigate the
> potential harms of shadow swing dances? I was considering, at the beginning
> of the dance, having dancers identify their shadow and mentioning, "this
> will be a shadow swing dance, so if you need to make any changes, do so
> now" (or something like that)--haven't gotten the wording down-pat, but the
> idea is giving dancers advance warning of a shadow swing so they can move
> (thereby changing their shadow) if they need to. Any thoughts on this
> method? Suggestions of others?
>
> Cheers.
> Maia
>
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>

-- 
Luke Donforth
Luke.Donforth at gmail.com <Luke.Donev at gmail.com>
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