Re: [Callers] Social Dance Club intro program

On Mon, Feb 24, 2014 at 10:50 AM, Ben Hornstein &lt;bhornstein5189(a)gmail.com&gt;wrote;wrote: That's 1/4 to 1/3 experienced dancers, which isn't bad. Also, it's much easier to call for small groups than for large groups. Not only are small groups more forgiving, but they're easier for you to watch. Are you going to have a wireless mike? You're welcome to borrow mine if you need it. For the beginners, every move is new, so adding a new move for each dance will get overwhelming pretty quickly. The first two dances pretty much have to introduce new figures, but by the third dance they know enough that you can pick a dance that only uses only those moves, and give their brains a break. I would go ahead and put a swing in the first dance. Swings are going to be a consistent element throughout the evening. Similarly, I would start with an improper dance. A proper dance does have a simpler progression, but then you're introducing yet another new thing when you switch to improper dances. Low piece count and a really good storyline help a lot. Here's a fun, silly dance with a piece count of 4: The Belles of Auburn (Roger Knox, 1958)<http://www.grantgoodyear.org/dance/programs/20121013.html#id1> Improper A1. (16) N sashay down and back A2. (16) N bal & sw, end facing dn B1. (16) 4-in-line dn hall, turn as cpls, ret, bend B2. (16) W ch over and bk The next dance has a higher piece count (5), but to some extent it is even easier because the progression is automatic: Whynot's Special (Roger Whynot)<http://www.grantgoodyear.org/dance/programs/20110212.html#id2> Improper, start in long lines A1. ( 8) Long lines fwd & bk ( 8) 1 sw, end facing down A2. (16) 4-in-line down hall, turn alone, ret, bend B1. ( 8) Cir lf ( 8) Cir rt B2. (16) W ch over and back The simple dances that you're considering are probably more complicated than you realize. You might want to bounce your program off of somebody first. Since you can't rely on the experienced dancers to fix problems occurring on the floor, you need to be able to do that while calling. Thus, you should ideally pick dances that you can call pretty much on autopilot. If you've never called a particular dance before, now might not be the time to start! It will probably fall apart at least once. Smile, blame the caller, reset the dance, fix the problem, and run the dance just long enough for the dancers to feel comfortable with it. My experience has been that if you don't restart a dance that has fallen apart, dancers feel that it is their fault for the failure. They'd much rather feel successful. I often find that when you have a high percentage of beginners, you often have at least one dance where the dance seems to hover on the ragged edge of disaster. It's working, but just barely, and you can feel it not-quite-gelling. I like to end those dance before they fall apart. Especially with beginners, if the last dance didn't work all that well, then I try to make sure that the next dance is one that is likely to be much more successful. (I keep a collection of guaranteed successful dances handy that I can pull out after abject failure!) If the last dance of the evening is awesome fun, nobody will remember failures earlier in the evening. (That's my "always end on a win" rule.) Best of luck, Grant -- Grant Goodyear web: http://www.grantgoodyear.org e-mail: grant(a)grantgoodyear.org