We are a college town - Gainesville FL - and have had very few young people
until recently when a committed contra dancer moved here from SC to go to
school and came to dance with us. She started a club on campus and now we
have dances on campus as well as our regular dances and are having a good
turnout of all ages to all the dances.
It was a little slow at first. The on-campus dances would have more
"geezers" than young people, but as long as there were several young people,
that was enough to keep them interested and coming back. The thing that got
the most young people coming was the techno contra. We would always have
techno contra at the break with blacklight and mirror balls and glow-stick
bracelets, etc. Last month, they held their first all techno dance and had
100 people, many from other universities across the state.
The young folks are coming up with all kinds of great ideas now. One guy is
in a fraternity and they are going to require their new pledges to come to a
contra dance in a skirt.
We also have a young person who is becoming a really fine caller and also
young musicians. We try as often as is possible to get the young caller and
band for the campus dance. For the others, we are looking at the most
high-energy bands. One band plays a medley of Beatles tunes that is always
a hit. Others have electric guitars, or other electronic instruments that
interest the young people.
Early on, we talked about a flash-mob on campus, but all agreed that it
would be counter productive if all the flash mob participants were
"geezers." We might as well hang up a sign that said: "Demonstration of
what you wouldn't be caught DEAD doing this weekend!!!" If you're going to
do a flash-mob to attract young people, you must have young people doing it!
I love the "ants-pants-contra dance" idea! We'll use that on campus!
One thing that I am very pleased about is that our dances are now truly
inter-generational. We have children through seniors and everyone dances
with everyone.
--
JoLaine Jones-Pokorney
"We are as gods and might as well get good at it!"
- Stewart Brand
-----Original Message-----
Date: Thursday, September 22, 2011 12:41:25 am
To: "Caller's discussion list" <callers(a)sharedweight.net>
From: "Greg McKenzie" <grekenzie(a)gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [Callers] Recruiting new dancers
Thank You Richard for this topic.
You did a great job of describing the situation. Word of mouth is key. All
of the other methods of "getting the word out" are ancillary at best and
should be regarded as serving to support the word of mouth effort. Flyers,
for example, are there to remind folks of what they heard from someone else
and substantiate the reference they have heard. This is one reason I think
flyers should be limited to only the vital information needed to
participate. Flyers work better when they do *not *attempt to persuade
anyone or tell them *why *they should attend. In a similar vein flyers
should also not attempt to describe or define the dance. Assume that the
reader has already heard about the dance from a friend or an acquaintance.
Using some reverse psychology is important. If the reader thinks the flyer
is "begging" for new participants it can be a turn off. In this respect
small dances might consider setting an exclusive tone in the sense that it
is a "best kept secret" rather than a poorly attended dance. I have seen
this work for small dances in our area. When dancers "discover" a small
dance and view it as a private secret other dancers become very interested.
Some dancers will keep the secret for fear that lots of new people will
destroy the "charm" of the small dance. This also works for newcomers.
You are absolutely correct about the role of young people. Here in Santa
Cruz, CA the area dance society has welcomed young people to become key
players in the dance community. Several are on the Board of Directors,
several are musicians at dances, and at least one is a caller.
I don't, by the way, view this process as one of "recruiting" new dancers.
I view it as a way of opening the dance events to the wider community. That
is a different perspective. If we view the dance as a community social
event the goal shifts from one of attempting to convert newcomers into dance
enthusiasts to one of simply opening the dance to a more diverse and
interesting community of participants. An effort to "convert" people or
"get them hooked" requires too much energy and is not consistent with the
explicit message that "all are welcome" and "no experience is needed."
- Greg McKenzie
On Wed, Sep 21, 2011 at 8:21 PM, Richard Hart <rich(a)harts.mv.com> wrote:
> Luke,
>
> While looking through old email messages, I found your query about new
> dancers and the thread of responses. I'd never read them until now (think I
> was away then), so forgive me my considerable delay in responding. I attend
> and call a number of dances in New Hampshire, and a few in Mass. and VT, as
> well. Some are fairly small, while others are much larger. Here are a few of
> my observations on this subject of attracting new dancers.
>
> 1. I have often asked new dancers how they heard about the dance and came
> to try it out. At least 95% of the time, the new dancers say that they came
> with a friend who recommended it to them. Most of the rest were existing
> da
--- Luke wrote:
I'm now wondering how many active contra dance callers are out there... I'm guessing
somewhere between 100 and 1000 (for an order of magnitude).
--- end of quote ---
The higher end of your range is probably correct. The Dance Gypsy lists 534 individuals
as leaders of contra dance. Charlie Seelig's dance pages shows just under 500
callers, though that list includes some who are not in the US and some who are
callers of squares or English country dance but not contras.
As an interesting pint of comparison, to illustrate how excited the Danes have
been about contras and traditional squares, in that country of about 5.5. million
people, over the last 30 years about 500 people have been trained as callers.
In any given year, there are about 60-75 active callers.
David Millstone
Lebanon, NH
Hello all,
I was wondering what fraction of callers have called for festivals? It seems
like nice information to have for folks as the develop as callers, and
Shared-Weight seemed a good place to do a quick informal poll.
To prevent flooding the list with lots of responses, please respond directly
to me at
Luke.Donev(a)gmail.com
I'll compile all the answers I get and send a summary to the list once the
responses peter out.
I'm going to arbitrarily define a festival as six or more hours of dancing,
and I'm interested in folks who have called for at least an hour (as opposed
to open mics and such, which are great, but different).
If this information has already been compiled, please respond with that
information.
Thanks!
--
Luke Donev
Luke.Donev(a)gmail.com
Perhaps if someone is curious enough to dance in virtual reality then they
might be curious enough to try it in real life. I guess the challenge is
to get them to step away from their computer. Uummm, I'll step away in
just another minute...
Donna Hunt
"Life may not be the party we hoped for, but while we're here we should
dance." -unknown
In a message dated 9/19/2011 5:36:01 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time,
cmbaker(a)tiac.net writes:
On Sep 16, 2011, at 12:51 PM, Chip Hedler wrote:
> (Bizarre aside: anyone remember Second Life? Wouldn't it be cool if you
> could program avatars to do dance moves and have a virtual contra dance,
or
> test dance sequences? Actually, forget that! It's totally against what I
> value about real dancing! )
I sent the following e-mail to the MWSD caller's list on April 1, 2010...
Begin forwarded message:
> From: Clark Baker <cmbaker(a)tiac.net>
> Date: April 1, 2010 12:37:41 AM EDT
> To: sd-callers(a)all8.com
> Subject: Square Dancing in Second Life
>
> With the box office success of Avatar, you may be interested in my
experiences taking square dancing to Second Life. In this virtual world, users
(residents) can interact with each other through avatars. Residents can
explore, meet other residents, socialize, participate in individual and
group activities, and create and trade virtual property and services with one
another, or travel throughout the world.
>
> Second Life has an internal currency, the Linden dollar (L$). L$ can be
used to buy, sell, rent or trade land or goods and services with other
users. L$ can be purchased using US Dollars and other currencies on the
LindeX exchange provided by Linden Lab, independent brokers or other resident
users.
>
> I put two and two together and created a square dance hall and offer
square dance lessons. People pay in L$ but I have made enough to make more
teaching dancing in Second Life than at some dances in the real world! I
know that some of you are going to say that teaching square dancing in virtual
reality doesn't count, and that the computer users should meet and
interact with real people. However, I believe that they are square dancing, and
any kind of square dancing is better than nothing.
>
> Let us know what you think.
--
Clark Baker, Belmont, MA
cmbaker(a)tiac.net
_______________________________________________
Callers mailing list
Callers(a)sharedweight.net
http://www.sharedweight.net/mailman/listinfo/callers
7 years ago, I sent out the first invitation e-mails asking people to
join a new discussion group called SharedWeight. Since then, the site
has become about much more than helping new callers. We've added lists
dedicated to helping organizers and musicians. And yesterday we added
the WebContent list that already has 40 members in the last 26 hours.
Seth and I are beyond pleased that so many of you have found the lists
to be valuable resources and have built a supportive community dedicated
to sharing information. Thank you all for your participation (even if
it's just lurking!).
So, Happy Birthday to all of us! With many more to come.
Chris Weiler and Seth Seeger
SharedWeight admins
Wow!
The level of response is amazing! Guess I'll jump on the bandwagon,
too--done a fair amount of content management setup from scratch using perl
and javascript to cobble together tools for non-techies to use for site
maintenance, so there might be times when I could pass along easily-bolted
on stuff other could use or just help with problem-solving. And I'm hoping
there are some experts with various well-developed systems like Drupal and
Joomla that have tips to share as well...
(Bizarre aside: anyone remember Second Life? Wouldn't it be cool if you
could program avatars to do dance moves and have a virtual contra dance, or
test dance sequences? Actually, forget that! It's totally against what I
value about real dancing! )
Chip Hedler
Hello everyone!
Your responses have been overwhelming! Chris and I have set up the new email list: webcontent(a)sharedweight.net. Head on over to this page to sign up:
http://www.sharedweight.net/mailman/listinfo/webcontent
Here are our guidelines for this list:
> This mailing list is for developers of websites for traditional dance organizations. This is a place where developers and website maintainers can support each other by:
>
> • Sharing information
> • Discussing issues related to hosting and content
> • Discussing topics from utilizing social media to different software options
>
> Members are encouraged to send questions to the group and learn from those with more experience.
>
Please move the current WordPress/hosting discussion over to this new list.
Enjoy!
Seth & Chris
>
> I appreciate hearing about the differences among WordPress, Joomla, &
> Drupal. I created my website in iWeb which will not be supported after this
> year, and I've been trying to figure out what to do. I think I need
> something more than WordPress, but I'm not really a techie. I kind of
> learned what I needed for each step of what I did/do, and then crossed my
> fingers that it would work (and also got help with some of it at the Apple
> store). I'm not too happy to think that I'll probably have to start from
> scratch (though there were limitations to iWeb that I didn't know until I
> had spent a few months creating the site), and I'm not really interested in
> learning any complex web design (like Dream Weaver, etc.). I see things like
> Site Builder and Ruby on Rails on my hosting service - but I have no idea
> how easy any of them are to use. Joomla sounds like it might be what I
> should look into.
> Thanks, Patricia
>
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: Martha Edwards <meedwards(a)westendweb.com>
> To: "Caller's discussion list" <callers(a)sharedweight.net>
> Date: Fri, 16 Sep 2011 15:08:13 -0500
> Subject: Re: [Callers] contra dance webmasters unite!
> Chip - I've been using *Joomla *for our site here in St Louis (
> http://childgrove.org) for about a year. For myself, it's the perfect
> blend
> of front-end ease-of-use for content updaters and back-end flexibility for
> the designer-techie who wants to make the site jump through a few hoops. I
> love it. I can do things I always needed to hire a programmer to do before
> -
> like make online registration forms that send you an email with the
> registration info AND send the registrant on to PayPal (thank you,
> Chronoforms!).
>
> However, since it looks as if, in the big Content Management Systems
> shakeout, there are three popular survivors, *WordPress, Joomla,* and *
> Drupal*, I've done some investigation into the other two as well.
>
> If the folks making the web site don't have a bunch of tech experience as a
> web designer or programmer, I'd probably recommend *WordPress*. It's a lot
> easier for non-techies to set up, and I've seen some spiffy sites done with
> it. On the other hand, I also hear it's a lot less flexible for web
> designer/programmers. In other words, if you want to do what IT wants you
> to
> do, it's GREAT, but if you want to do something slightly different, you may
> be out of luck. That makes sense, though. I figure you get extreme
> ease-of-use OR extreme flexibility, but not both. Don't know if you could
> do
> an online registration form with it, for example. Anyone have experience
> with this?
>
> I can't imagine a contra dance group ever needing something like *Drupal*,
> which (I hear) falls squarely in the techie (extreme flexibility) camp. But
> hey, if you've got someone who knows it, rumor has it that it can do
> amazing
> things.
>
> Uh-oh, just realized that we're not already on the contradance web-stuff
> discussion list. My apologies.
>
> So, in penance, and to keep the discussion about dance, I will include here
> a link to my cute little double grand square Flash
> movies<http://www.westendweb.com/doublegrandsquare/>
> .
>
> M
> E
>
>
>
>
Hi - It was mentioned that Wordpress, Joomla, etc are limiting to those that
are "real" web designers. It really isn't. I work for the University of
Florida and we are taking our entire web presence - several hundred pages -
into Wordpress. Our army of web designers are in agreement that this is a
good move and they can do everything they've been doing, but easier and more
well organized. I am not one of those web designers so I can't answer
anyone's technical questions, but I know that you are not limited to the
templates provided.
--
JoLaine Jones-Pokorney
"We are as gods and might as well get good at it!"
- Stewart Brand
