Re: [Callers] Flow & Glide Contras

John Sweeney asked for dances suitable for a session on "Flow & Glide Contras." One I'll suggest is "Joyride" by Erik Weberg. http://www.kluberg.com/eriksdances.html#Joyride (description) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dwO9XRUBk9w (video) A distinctive feature of the dance is a transition from a half poussette into a hey. This transition has delightful flow if dancers are confident about where they're going, but it's unusual enough to be a potential teaching challenge. I've seen callers walk dancers through the half-poussette, ending like this [top of set at top of screen] M2>==<W2 W1>==<M1 and then struggle to describe how the couples interleave with each other to get lined up across the set like this W1> M2> <M1 <W2 with men facing each other in the middle and with women on the outside facing their neighbors' backs, ready for the men to start the hey. Last year, I was at a dance weekend where Erik Weberg called "Joyride", and I got to observe how he taught the transition into the hey. After walking us through the half poussette, he told the women (who at that point had been backing up) to let go of their partners and back up a couple more steps. Then he addressed the men something like this Men, face each other <very slight pause> and pass left shoulders to start half a hey ... [Then he had men pass left shoulders one more time swing partner, etc.] Note how this approach avoids any need for an explicit description of the configuration shown in the second diagram. Note also that by taking a couple steps back, the women opened ample space so that after the men passed each other, the men didn't have to make an uncomfortably sharp change of direction in order to weave into the right shoulder pass with their partners. Finally, note that Erik taught the action of women backing away as an integral part of the walk-through. Contrast this with what it would be like if a caller taught the transition in some other way (so that the hey was more cramped during the walk-through), got the dancers lined up ready for the music to start, and then threw in a little lecture: Now, women, as you make the transition from the pousette into the hey, you can give the men an easier path if mrumph mrumph mrumph space mrumph mrumph mrumph cut between mruph mrumph mrumph ... Here "mrumph, mrumph, mrumph" is what the caller might as well be saying, considering that (1) some dancers will take standing still and being lectured at as a cue to tune out and start socializing, especially if they detect that the caller is going off about some "style point"; (2) some dancers will have difficulty hearing the caller over the surrounding talk, even if they aren't directly involved in conversations; and (3) some dancers just aren't very good at visualizing what callers mean by this sort of description (talking about some action that the dancers are not currently in position to do) even when the room isn't noisy. I think I probably would not have noticed the details of Erik's teaching or appreciated it's beautiful simplicity if I hadn't previously noticed some awkwardness in the way some other callers taught this transition. As it was, I knew during the walk-through that we were coming up on something that I'd seen callers struggle with, and I was primed to pay careful attention to how Erik handled it. --Jim