Re: [Callers] Update

Chris, they say that learning comes through experience - and boy have you had some experiences! Thank you for being brave enough to tell these tales that illustrate pitfalls that callers need to avoid. Small dance venues, with a mix of beginner and experienced dancers, challenge a caller's skills. You succeed here not just by preparing and practicing a predetermined program, but by building flexibility into your program, in advance. When calling at a small venue with lots of beginners (including new dancers arriving late), I have learned to be ready to substitute an easier dance that shares similar choreography with the harder dance that I had intended to use. If the dancers still falter, I ditch my planned program, and fall back to a previously-prepared program of very easy dances that I know well, and that build one upon another to introduce new figures, step-by-step. It is vitally important that the dancers have success and find joy in dancing. It is not so important that the caller call the specific dances that s/he prepared. I learned this from Linda Leslie. It is an education to watch her throw away a carefully prepared program, and put the dancers' needs first. I love Ted's Triplets, but at this kind of dance venue I use simple triplets that I know by heart. Make it look spontaneous, but leave nothing to chance. I do think that Flirtation Reel is a good dance for beginners. As Clark says, it may not provide the normal entrance to the hey, but that's not key here, since beginners have no idea what the normal entrance to a hey might be. If taught correctly, it is not difficult to walk down and up the hall beside a neighbor, and then to face that neighbor. You always pass neighbors by the right shoulder. When in the center of the set, you pass your partner by the left. And the exit from this hey is very forgiving. The gypsy allows time for lost beginners to catch up with the dance and recover lost time for the swing. This is better than hey dances which call for a balance and swing precisely at the end of the hey or (worse yet for the beginner), moving on up or down the set to find new neighbors as the dance begins again. ... Bob ---------------------------------------------------- Robert Jon Golder 164 Maxfield Street robertgolder(a)comcast.net New Bedford, MA 02740 (508) 999-2486 voice