2 Dec
2011
2 Dec
'11
2 p.m.
Hi, thanks for the help, see below.
And BTW, I forgot to mention in my intro that I'm also very involved with
NEFFA as a Director and being the guy responsible for Advance Ticket Sales
and getting the sound equipment into the smaller venues for several years.
Late night/new parent brain. :)
On Fri, Dec 2, 2011 at 2:01 AM, Alan Winston - SSRL Central Computing <
winston(a)slac.stanford.edu> wrote:
totally in sync with the music and choreography without counting. I just
know/feel what comes next and when. I guess the point then is that I need
to transfer that connectedness while being on the other side of the mic.
[snip]
[snip]
I'm pretty
confident in my
dance selection skills but I'm definitely still counting my way through
the
music to call. So one concern is with making sure
I stay firmly anchored
to
the music, without depending upon the crowd for
cues. I craft my calls to
fit the phrasing and rehearse with music to get confident but dance
breakdowns are a fear. I've come close a couple of times early on but
have
been able to set things right somehow on the
fly... however, I was not
very
confident doing so at the time.
Hmm. Do you pay attention to the music when you're dancing? Do you know
where
you are in the tune when you're on the floor? You kinda need for that to
be
second nature - something you don't have to spend conscious brain cycles
on.
If it isn't, I can only suggest even more practice with recorded music than
you're doing, plus trying to be conscious about it when you're dancing, so
you
always know what phrase you're in. (If you're a good dancer, you probably
do
actually know this, but you might not know you do.)
Good point. Yes, as a dancer with that form of immersion in the dance, I'm
- In working with the musicians, are there any
customary "I've lost
track,
where are we in the music?" signals?
No, and you really don't want to do that. It's much likelier that they're
going
to repeat something they shouldn't or not to repeat something they should
than
that you're going to get lost. You need to be ready to say to somebody
"Play
another B!"
Interesting! Will work on that. Find some couples who are doing the dance right and
check in on where they
are
in the pattern. If there aren't any you can rely on, then you picked the
wrong
dance.
I agree on the dance selection - my "breakdown" near misses to date were
either from rookie mistakes (like calling a balanceandswing instead of
balance...and swing) or an alignment of the planets around a particular
4-some in a line.
I'm a mis-matcher by nature -- I see/focus on what sticks out. So when a
4-some is having trouble then that is where my attention naturally goes. I
need to make the shift in this instance to see but not overly focus on that
local issue, if the rest of the hall is OK. And picking some trusty couples
would certainly help.
Thanks again!