Re: [Callers] Pining for you

Gale, you notated the dance correctly. A Google search for "Pining for you" "David Smukler" took me to the dance on his website-- http://www.davidsmukler.syracusecountrydancers.org/DSS.html#pines Square Through 2 would give the dancers a hand connection that's not there in the cross trail, yes, but even that figure can cause difficulty with less skilled dancers. After the first pull by, dancers need to know which direction to turn for the second one. I'm speculating that the problem is not with the dance itself but rather in selecting that as a dance to try out with many newer dancers on the floor. The sequence in B2 works just fine, but if you have many people who don't know what they're doing, you'll need to spend more time than you want explaining how this works. (It's sort of akin to teaching a hey for four on the left diagonal at a one-night stand. Yes, it could be done, but by the time one had finished the lengthy instruction, a demonstration, and countless walkthroughs, you've spent far too much time talking and the dancers are convinced that they can't do this and why would anyone in their right mind want to do this kind of complicated dancing anyhow... I mean, what's the point?) In David's dance, folks need to get into the correct position with the circle left exactly 3/4, then execute a rollaway on the side of the set to change places with the neighbor, and then dance the cross-trail with their neighbor to end up crossing the set to end on the correct side, progressed. Lots of opportunities there for folks to go wrong. I always encourage less-experienced callers to select simpler material than their first instinct. In this, I'm echoing Ted Sannella, who stressed the KISS principle: Keep it simple, stupid! Most callers I know, and I certainly am counting myself in this number, have the tendency to want to call a fascinating sequence, something with a distinct difference that'll make the dance (and, by extension, the person who called it) stand out in memory. All well and good, up to a point. The key thing to keep in mind is that we're there at the mic to make it possible for dancers to dance, and most of them want to spend as much time as possible dancing, not learning something complicated. (A workshop setting has somewhat different ground rules, but I'm speaking at an open-to-the-public event.) We do better, I think, to present material that can be taught quickly and then let the dancers enjoy themselves. My suggestion would be to save trying out such a dance for an opportunity when you can work with a small group of experienced dancers, perhaps a gathering of callers where folks are there explicitly to explore dances that they've never called. David Millstone