Re: [Callers] 2 questions

Greg, As with Amy's comment, I'm not sure how much to take here as tongue and cheek and how much is an actual dislike for medleys. I'm a novice caller, but a very experienced dancer and dance teacher and I find that medleys can be a very fun experience for all involved if done thoughtfully and at the proper time. Some responses to your comments: 1. Announcing a medley in advance if obviously advisable in a mixed crowd, but with experienced dancers, going directly into one without announcement simply adds to the energy. I've never experienced a medley as an 'ambush' nor have I heard that from others. Most dancers I'm aware of find the experience quite exciting as long as the changes are clearly communicated and flow logically from the previous moves. 2. I think the music always make a difference and that dancers are always aware of it unless a line has completely fallen apart. 3. While some medleys, such as the recent ones at NEFFA can go on for a while (25 minutes), a well-done one needn't take up any more time than the 10-12 minutes of a regular dance. I point to Rick Mohr's lovely medley at the NEFFA Keen Contra's session as an example. He called a medley without a starting walk-through that included two changes. The moves and the changes weren't difficult but the crowd loved it and the phenomenal fiddle playing didn't hurt. In contrast, although I enjoyed the planned medley I went to at NEFFA (Saturday, high school), I thought it lacked some of the spontaneity that makes a medley fun and exciting to dance to (no offense to anyone who called or helped plan them...the dances changes did flow together very nicely and I think part of the issue was that the music started out too slow). I also believe that a medley can be fun even for novice dancers who know the basics. The fun is in not so much in the complexity of the dance but in not knowing what will come next. At the Northfield, MA dance in the 1980s, the Fourgone Conclusions would often play continuously for 20-25 minutes. Cammy Kaynor would often gradually change the dance once or twice across that time, usually keeping half the dance the same and altering the other half. This generally worked quite well, kept things interesting for the dancers and was not apparently confusing for the less experienced dancers. (Cammy occasionally did other things back then that would have completely overwhelmed beginners, like walking through one dance and then calling a completely different one, but that's a different discussion.) Will Loving Amherst, MA on 4/30/08 8:23 PM, Greg McKenzie at gregmck(a)earthlink.net wrote: -- William M. Loving Dedication Technologies, Inc. 7 Coach Lane Amherst, MA 01002-3304 USA will(a)dedicationtechnologies.com Tel: +1 413 253-7223 (GMT ­5) Fax: +1 206 202-0476