[Callers] Planned vs. "on-the-fly" call wording (was Re: Circle & pass through as the last move of a dance)

Greg can correct me if I'm wrong, but when he refers to "making up calls on the fly", I don't think he's referring to making up choreograph on the fly. I think he's talking about the situation where a caller has chosen a dance with fixed choreography but is deciding on the fly what words to use in calling it and what beats to say them on. Let me explain by giving some examples. (And again, Greg can comment if I'm misrepresenting him.) If someone were to hand me a dance card with simple figures like A1. Neighbors bal & sw A2. Fwd and bk W chain I'm confident I could come up with appropriate and accurately timed calls on the fly. I could even adjust them on the fly depending on what I saw happening on the dance floor. For example, early in the dance, I might use a 4-beat call like in LONG LINES go FORward and BACK After the dance was going a while, I might reduce it to a 2-beat call FORward and BACK for a while before dropping out entirely. If, for some reason, many dancers were having trouble ending the swing on time, I might make the call longer to allow more reaction time, for example and WHEN you've SWUNG, make LONG LINES; go FORward and BACK In each case, I'd know where to start the call (e.g., on beat 13 of A1 for a 4-beat call, beat 15 for a 2-beat call, or beat 11 for a 6-beat call). And if the phrasing of the music was clear, I could identify the correct starting beat for the call without explicitly counting to myself. I think many (most?) of you reading this are similarly able to call such simple sequences with accurate timing and without needing to have calls written out verbatim, But what happens when we get to a dance that has several short moves in succession, as for example in the B2 part of "Batja's Breakdown" or of "Southern Swing"? From "Batja's Breakdown" by Tom Hinds: B2. Pass through to an ocean wave (4) Balance the wave (4) Neighbors allemande right 1/2; men allemande left 1/2; partners allemande right 3/4 and look for your shadow (8) From "Southern Swing" by Steve Zakon-Anderson: B2. Women allemande right 1x, partners pull by* left hand, men pull by* right hand; neighbors allemande left 1 1/4 to meet new neighbor. [*In place of "pull by left [or right]", I've also seen the dance notated with "pass by left [right]" or with "allemande L [R] 1/2".] In this sort of situation, it may not be so easy to come up with clear, accurately-timed calls on the fly. If you try to say for each move who does it (partners/neighbors/men/women), what the move is (e.g., allemande), which hand to use, and how far to go, there simply may not be enough time to squeeze it all in without starting to call late. So you have to decide what to leave out. Maybe you can sometimes leave out the word "allemande" (or even "turn") because the dancers know from the walk-through that the dance ends with a sequence of hand turns. Maybe you can count on the dancers to remember that they use alternating hands (or shoulders). Maybe dancers can infer how far to turn once you tell them who they have to meet for the next action. Or, on the other hand, maybe there are points in the sequence where it will really help dancers if you explicitly say one of those things that you might have hoped dancers would be able to remember (from the walk through) or infer on their own. In any case, you must somehow decide what words to include in your calling (and in what order) and what to leave out. You could just lead a walk-through, signal the band to start, watch the dancers, and trust that the appropriate and well-timed words to help them through the dance will come into your brain and out of your mouth. But if you do so, you may find that your first try isn't so great and that it takes you a few repeats of the dance to refine it. Those first few rounds of the dance, however, are the ones where dancers would most benefit from clear and well-timed calling, both to guide them through the figures with the right timing and to get the feeling of the right timing into their memory for the rest of the dance. Greg's suggestion (as I understand it) is that you plan the exact wording and timing of the calls in advance and have them written on the dance card. He might (I'm not sure) carry this idea further and advocate writing out exact call wording/timing even for simple sequences like the one I gave near the beginning of this message A1. Neighbors bal & sw A2. Fwd and bk W chain He might even recommend (again, I'm not sure) that callers use a notation based on the words and timing of the calls, rather than on the timing of the figures, as the primary notation (or even the sole notation) on their dance cards. (And one more time, let me emphasize that I don't really know how far Greg goes in this direction. Only he can tell us for sure.) --Jim On Feb 12, 2014, at 11:32 PM, Alan Winston wrote: