Re: [Callers] Integrating Newcomers

[Apologies in advance for what ended up much longer than I intended it to be. A remark often attributed to Mark Twain though it seems to have come from Pascal two hundred years earlier: "I apologize for writing a long letter. If I'd had more time, I'd have written a shorter one."] I've been delighted to read so many letters offering such a spirited defense of mixers. I call 'em, usually one a night as the third dance-- following advice from such respected leaders as Ted Sannella and Tony Parkes-- and though it's less common, I've been known to do more than one even at a regular series. --- Greg wrote: Our ability to influence the audience needs to be tempered, however, with a strong commitment to getting unbiased and even brutal feedback from as many people as possible. --- end of quote --- No arguments here, though I admit to not seeking out brutal feedback. Honesty is good... no need for anyone to be brutal, and I admit that I'd be suspicious of someone whose sense of humanity was such that they would deliver unwelcome news in a brutal fashion. But I digress... The challenge for callers is that most of the feedback we receive comes a very small subset of the total dance population. These are almost always the people whom caller Ralph Sweet (writing in 1966) described as "the overactive 10%," whom today we might call the serious dance hobbyists, the hardcore "dance gypsies." I'll quote some of Ralph's analysis below. Although his book-- Let's Create Old Tyme Square Dancing-- is not easily available, I encourage folks to look at the excerpt that Clark Baker posted on line here: http://www.tiac.net/~mabaker/western-style-in-trouble.html Ralph is talking about the modern western square dance movement in the mid-1960s, but there are similar tendencies in today's world of zesty contras. ---quoted material follows: "A part of each club was bound to consist of some whose enthusiasm was greater than that of the rest. These would often dance three to five nights per week. Then they would return twice monthly to dance with their old home club, most of whose members only danced twice a month, or at most once weekly. The three- to five-night per week dancer became rapidly more proficient, and delighted in the constant challenge of new, fast material he heard from other callers both in and out of the area. Soon he became dissatisfied and impatient with what seemed to be the slow pokey pace of his own club and caller. He was convinced that if the rest of the membership were exposed to all the exciting, challenging material offered at the faster clubs, their enthusiasm would increase to where his was. This "top 10%" would therefore urge the home caller to call faster, more challenging material, whether the average member could keep up with it or not, or even enjoy it. "The "overactive 10%", because of their enthusiasm and obvious dancing ability, became in almost all cases the officers of the club. Their pressures for more challenge were therefore in an official capacity. ..." ---end quoted material Who are the dancers who feel comfortable coming up to a caller to complain about a dance? It's not the new dancers, perhaps there for the first time or even with several evenings of dancing under their feet. These newcomers haven't yet learned that each dance is "supposed" to have one. They may even enjoy a dance without a swing because it lets their dizzy head stop spinning for a while. The elderly couple may enjoy a dance without aerobic -- let alone frenetic-- motion, and they certainly won't complain if a dance is called to a stately march instead of a hot reel. The old-timers who remember fondly dancing Sackett's Harbor or Queen Victoria or British Sorrow will be delighted to see some of that older material on the program, so they're not going to complain, though they might-- by dint of seniority-- drop a few hints that it'd be nice to see a few more chestnuts in the evening's repertoire. Similarly, folks who remember with fondness dancing in a time and place where an evening's program included contras, squares, mixers, international folk dances, couple dances, and more... they're not going to complain about a mixer in the program. It's the hard-core, the dancers whom the caller sees at different events, whether weekly or monthly dances or at weekends and at camps. These are the dancers who will gripe about a dance with no partner swing. These are the dancers who know the caller by name and who feel certain that theirs is the correct prescription for what the dance needs. The folks who complain about mixers are, in my experience-- and here I'm making a large generalization-- dancers who think that the dancing is about the pleasure they get with a particular partner, rather than dancers who are thinking about the health of the community as a whole. Greg writes, "During the first half of the evening my priority is to empower the regular dancers to take an active role in welcoming and partnering with newcomers." I'm delighted to hear that stated so clearly, and I hope that everyone on this list shares a similar agenda. Heck, there may even be some callers here who are interested in seeing newcomers welcomed and partnered throughout the entire evening. ;-) Mind you, I'm not saying that I tune out the comments if/when people complain. I listen to what they're saying and try, as Greg aptly put it, " to maintain an open mind and an attitude of humility." That does not mean, though, that I must agree with them or even change my philosophy. I was calling once at a very large dance in an urban setting, hundreds of dancers. One came up to me upset because the first dance of the evening didn't have a partner swing. She was certain that I was calling a dance with "something wrong" with it. Our conversation revealed that she had been dancing a "long time," which turned out to be three years. She maintained that she had never encountered a dance before without a partner swing, so clearly the one I called had something wrong with it. I explained briefly why for that first dance I wanted a dance with just neighbor swings, and I think she understood some of what I said, but clearly the underpinnings of her dance universe had been shaken. How sad, I thought, that this dancer had been so involved in such a wonderful activity and yet her community dance had exposed her to such a small piece of the extensive country dance repertoire. We all know about the tyranny of the majority. In a series with a large number of hardcore dancers, it is the caller more than any other single individual who is looking out for the new dancers. The caller's job is made easier, of course, by a committee that shares these ideas, and by having allies among at least some of the experienced dancers on the floor. Although it may mean that the overactive 10% in charge of booking callers may not bring them back, ultimately, callers must follow their own sense of what is best for the dance, programming with the longterm health of the community in mind. David Millstone Lebanon, NH