You raise a good point.  It took a long time for someone to impress upon me that, although I have no problem with positional calling, many people do.  Different people have different strengths.

When calling for a group of beginners, I've found that things go more smoothly if I know several ways to describe an action, and use them all.  "Look for the next, look away from the couple you've been dancing with, for a new person."  Some people will understand that they are dancing with one couple after another and turn the right way when I say "Look for the next", some are orienting themselves relative to the other couple and find "look away from the other couple" clearer, and some do not have a strong positional sense but will look around for a new person to dance with.  Different calls work best for different dancers.

Jacob

On Wed, Jun 3, 2015 at 11:58 AM, Aahz Maruch via Callers <callers@lists.sharedweight.net> wrote:
On Wed, Jun 03, 2015, Jim Hemphill via Callers wrote:
>
> I realize that it is much easier on callers to just substitute a label  for
> ladies and gents on their calling cards.  It shifts the burden onto the
> dancers who haven't grown up in a genderless dance environment as their
> brains translate the label into a term they are used to.   Positional
> teaching and calling is more challenging for the caller.  Not every dance
> will lend itself to this technique but I bet with a little thought most
> would.

Positional calling is also considerably more difficult for at least some
dancers.  My perception is that changing the "gender" label is pretty
easy for most dancers -- at least, I've never seen many people struggling
with it, and I do see people struggling with contra corners (which is the
most common use-case in standard contra dancing).
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