Re: [Callers] Programming an Evening - Variety

I'll second Cynthia's comments. If you're calling for one night stands or for newcomers, having familiar figures reappear is an asset, rather than a problem. If your crowd is made of hard-core dancers, then you'll want to look for dances that have something different. You won't want to include three dances in an evening with Petronella twirls, for example. (Heck, look at the number of dancers who want to have every dance include a partner swing and a neighbor swing-- talk about repetition!) And if your crowd is a mixture of the two-- newcomers and hard-core dancers alike-- then congratulations! That sort of dance is really important to keep going, and, by the way, it's also the hardest to program. Not long ago, when I was calling for a group of enthusiastic dancers-- they only wanted contras, no other formations, obligatory partner swing in every dance, that sort of event-- I designed a program where each dance of the evening had a special figure that appeared in that dance and only that dance. Thus, there was a dance where couples acted as a unit, there was another dance that moved dancers from a wave on one side of the hall to a long wave on the other side, and so on. The rest of each dance could recycle the same basics and no one minded or even noticed. There was, though, something unique about each dance and that made a memorable program. David Millstone