[Callers] medley

[Jerome Grisanti via Callers]

As Aahz points out, contra medleys are highly dependent upon enunciation
and the sound system. They are also highly dependent upon the crowd's
expectations and experience.

I recently called for a group that included a high percentage of
"experienced" dancers whose approach seemed to be, "every time I interact
with an opposite-sex person, it's a swing, despite what the caller has
taught."

I was not calling a medley, just a relatively staightforward contra that
was memorable enough for most of the dancers. I have to assume their
version of a "dance trance" was a bit different than mine.

I also assume that a medley in that atmosphere would have been a complete
train wreck.

--Jerome

Jerome Grisanti
660-528-0858
http://www.jeromegrisanti.com

"Whatever you do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius and power
and magic in it." --Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

On Sun, Apr 17, 2016 at 12:53 PM, Aahz Maruch via Callers <
callers at lists.sharedweight.net> wrote:

> [the message I'm responding to was sent privately, I got permission to
> respond publicly]
>
> On Sun, Apr 17, 2016, Rod and Chris Krehbiel wrote:
> > On Sunday, April 17, 2016 10:12 AM, Aahz Maruch via Callers <
> callers at lists.sharedweight.net> wrote:
> >>  On Sun, Apr 17, 2016, Laur via Callers wrote:
> >>>
> >>> I'm debating if 6 or 8 times thru the dances during a medley make more
> >>> sense. I've gone back and forth on this for years. Thoughts?
> >>
> >> That depends on your goal.  I'm hearing-impaired, I dislike medleys in
> >> the first place, they combine the worst of contra and square dancing.
> >> For me, more times through is better, gives me more chance to dance
> >> trance.
> >
> > Since I have a goal of combining the BEST of contra and square dance,
> > I'm intrigued by your comment that medleys combine the worst of contra
> > and square dance. Could you expand and explain?
>
> The short version is that contra dance callers on average enunciate less
> clearly than square dance callers, contra calling in general assumes that
> they're calling under the music rather than over the music the way square
> dance callers do (or calling when no music is playing -- the
> walkthrough), sound engineering in contra halls emphasizes the music,
> contra dancers have much less training in responding to live calling, and
> contra vocabulary/grammar has less structure than square dance.
>
> Therefore -- and particularly for hearing-impaired people -- contra
> medleys represent a challenge that almost always combines the worst of
> square dance (live calling) with the worst of contra (poor ability to
> hear the calling).
>
> Obviously, it would be possible to combine the best of contra and square
> dance, but WRT hearing impairments, it would pretty much need to be
> approached from the square dance side (i.e. focusing on the voice and
> then working to get the dancers to follow the musical phrasing the way
> contra dancers do).
> --
> Hugs and backrubs -- I break Rule 6
> http://rule6.info/
>                       <*>           <*>           <*>
> Help a hearing-impaired person: http://rule6.info/hearing.html
> _______________________________________________
> Callers mailing list
> Callers at lists.sharedweight.net
> http://lists.sharedweight.net/listinfo.cgi/callers-sharedweight.net
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.sharedweight.net/pipermail/callers-sharedweight.net/attachments/20160418/b468f032/attachment.htm>