[Callers] Re: Advanced dances gone awry

I don't have any great wisdom to impart here, but it's a general topic I'm extremely interested in. I've been more concerned with these questions in the English dance scene, and I want to validate that these are difficult questions. I don't understand what the goal of an advanced contra dance series / session is. The very occasional attempts to have such a contra series here in the Bay Area have, in my view, foundered because of really unclear intent. (The idea has been to have special dances with a faster pace of instruction and less coverage of basic figures, made more explicit by not having a beginner lesson - but first timers show up anyway, regulars who can't manage show up anyway, the caller has to accomodate them because it's no fun to make everybody try to do dances that are too hard for the room, and then there's no visible difference between a regular and a Zesty/advanced session. (I think these sessions ended up getting called "Zesty" because "Advanced" sounded too snooty/exclusionary, but of course all contra dances should be zesty.). I think the point of a NEFFA medley - there's no teaching and no walkthroughs - so you can't really do it if you don't know what you're doing and that includes being able to execute this list of figures is pretty clear. (Although I see that Bill Olson disagrees that people who can't do it should be kept from doing it, rather that the people who can do it should help get them where they need to be, and that the idea of excluding people is antithetical to contra dancing. Which I agree is a completely valid and coherent position, but which I think only has a chance of working (in the sense of medley lines not breaking down, etc) if most of the people who can't do it so there are enough people there who *can* do it to absorb the rest.). But at least medley is a fairly clearly definable thing: For the duration of this session, contra dance continuously with no pauses, no walkthroughs, and no teaching. What is the goal of an advanced contra session? Digression to ECD. ECD really has a qualitative difference between beginner/intermediate level material and experiences and high-end experiences. It became really clear to me going to Lenox Assembly last year that there is a level of participation in the creation of beauty - exercising dance technique in the service of a choreographer's vision - at the high end which is still social because all the dancers are participating in that and you do have a sense of all being on the same team to do that; there's a unity of purpose in that production, and the people who select for this are people who are willing to actually work on learning the dances and doing them well, which necessitates working together. (That was the last Lenox; it's followed this year by "The Phoenix", same venue, same time, same purpose.). This isn't exactly an invitational event - anyone can apply - but to have your application accepted I think you have to be a known to the organizers as a good taking-it-seriously dancer or be able to have someone whose judgment they trust vouch for you. That is of course exclusionary AF (and structurally resembles the kind of old-boy (legacy and recommendation) network that often silently implements racist and sexist exclusion) but it has to be to accomplish the goals of the weekend. An amazing thing that I hardly get anywhere else was that I, as a dancer, could really rely on everybody else to be doing their part and keep my focus on doing my own part well [which certainly includes making my appointments, giving good weight, making eye contact]. It was worth a cross-country airfare and a not-cheap stay in a B&B to do it and I'd do it again. It was a sublime experience I couldn't get at a regular dance or at most dance camps.) At dance camps there are often sessions of advanced English dances (usually complicated or novel figures) and they always schedule "For All" sessions opposite them. It's not really functional to do a whole session on Andrew Shaw's reconstructions of dances from the early 1700s if people don't have a fairly full understanding of common figures including contra corners, heys for three and four, etc - and it's pretty great to get six of those beautiful dances in an hour instead of spending 40 minutes on one of them, which is what would happen with beginners. In those sessions, if you don't send the people who can't manage over to the "For All" class, la Locally we have an experienced English dance which has devolved to "great music and efficient teaching and prompting of mostly dances experienced dancers have done before:', which is lovely. People who can't manage are accepted and looked out for as much as possible. Some things that ought, in my view, to be possible (as, for example, do a no-walk-through of a dance with really standard figures, so you get high return on time invested because the investment is minimal) are not reliably possible. The only time I tried that it turned out that there was someone at the experienced English dance who'd never done any English dancing before. The frustration of my scheme as a caller notwithstanding, it's still a very nice dance to go to as an experienced dancer, but it's not the sublime experience of Lenox Assembly or the somewhat challenging experience of a dance camp session covering unfamiliar material at a fast clip.) All of that is to say, different goals call for different measures, different measures produce different outcomes. Back to contra. What is an advanced contra dancer? (Erik Hoffman in one of his books has an advanced contra dancer aas someone who's reached the point of wanting to do what's best for the set, embrace and look out for new dancers, etc, etc. Some very skilled contra dancers are primarily in it for personal expression - flourishes and improv hrough the dance. Others know all the figures and are always on time, leave people they interact with pointing the right direction for their next move, etc. What is the goal of an advanced contra dance? (More dancing less teaching? Ability to do "Pinball Wizard" without confusing anybody to death? I'm pretty sure it isn't "use all your skil to express the intention of the choreogtrapher as faithfully as possible and thereby be inside and part of a beautiful and emotionally expressive work of participatory art" - which really is teh highest-end ECD goal.) So that question is both because of my lack of experience with existing advanced dances and Socratically - what are you trying to do, and then what means will help you achieve it? [And that may raise a bigger question of "what is the goal of contra dancing?"] (And I've been in advanced ECD sessions at camps where the caller removed people who in the caller's view couldn't manage and were dragging down the class. While they could just hop over to the simultaneous "for all" class, it's a very uncomfortable moment for everybody. At a weekend where there may be only one session of the advanced class if it's going to happen it has to happen during that session, and however discreetly the caller tries to do it it risks humiliating the person to whome it is done. At a weeklong camp you can evaluate doing the first session and discreetly advise the unqualified person afterward. When it's done in session, as someone who isn't currently at risk of having that happen to him, it's simultaneously a bummer and a relief.) I think it may be harder to turn on a dime in English than in contra because there are specific tunes for specific dances, musicians may practice them in advance, you can't make them practice enough tunes for every eventuality, so you have to be pretty canny when planning to accommodate likely eventualities. In contra, band can play the same hot tunes for easy dances and hard ones, so the only difference for *them* (aside from maybe starting at more merciful tempos) is how llong they have to pick tunes during the walkthrough. Purely for callers dealing with the situation once it's happened already: I don't know if advanced contras are meant to be difficult/spatially-challenging etc contras. You could in general try to accommodate.a mixed level floor by trading complexity for novelty. Unusual figures equalize things for everybody (if nobody's used to a left-hand chain the beginners are at no disadvantage). You can look for dances where what partners do are absoutely symmetrical and socially-engineer partnerships where at least one member knows what they're doing and the other can keep their eye on them. 2) As an organizer: as I keep saying here, what you can do depends on what your goals are. What does "advanced" mean? [It's obviously different from "experienced" becasue some people have lots of experience and still can't manage. What are the set of things that callers should be able to expect of the dancers? Write that down on the flyer and put up a sign at registration: "This is a dance for people who can confidently dance heys for four, dolphin heys, and contra corners without any instruction, who don't get dizzy or disoriented easily, and who are able to assist partners and neighbors in doing their parts." I think that's the best you can do in helping unqualified people to self-select, and avoid Dunning-Kruger don't-know-enough-to-know-you-don't-know-enough self assessments. (But you run the risk of filtering out people who can manage fine but know they're not perfect and then decide to stay away, so you might have to reach out to invite those people as well even if it's an open-to-all-qualified event.) 3) How do we elevate the dance level. I sure don't have a good 100% answer. I think our having collectively determined that contra and ECD sessions are parties rather than classes limits how much plain instruction you can do. Style workshops seem to exist outside the universe of regular dances (as separate events or at camps/festivals) so you already have to be pretty committed before you get to one. So this leaves callers who want to teach basically having to slip in concise tips which pay off immediately in the dance you're walking through, perhaps programming to make that same tip pay off more than once in the evening in order to reenforce it, etc. [I spent 30 seconds on arms in poussettes in the English dance I called yesterday and it paid off.]. And you can't do too many of those in one session, so progress is slow. It may be possible to get a little more teaching in via pointing out the magic moment in the dance that can be achieved in this particular way, but it really does have to have a real payoff. I have not really explored this yet in myown but I *think* there's some possiblities in positional contra calling, even if role names are sometimes used, in getting people to better understand the whole dance. (Thsi is definitely the case in English.). In the contra-specific positional calling I've danced to, it more often identifies the person who has momentum forward or the person whose right hand is free, etc, and in well-crafted modern dances that shoudl get people thinking about and feeling the flow that will help them through the pattern, and I think getting used to that and being able to look for that thread of motion rather than clunking through figures, stopping, and then thinking about the next one is (aft er not hurting anybody, giving good weight, ending swings on the right side) is really the beginning of good modern contra style and also of putting mroe figures on autopilot and being present in the dance. That opens up more brain space for unusual figures *if they flow*. Thanks for raising these important questions. I hope it's clear that I don't think I have all the answers, but I'm glad we're talking about it. -- Alan ________________________________________ From: Maia McCormick via Contra Callers <contracallers(a)lists.sharedweight.net> Sent: Sunday, April 16, 2023 6:49 PM To: Shared Weight Contra Callers Subject: [Callers] Advanced dances gone awry I attended an advanced dance this afternoon that was intermediate at best, and had a few raw beginners in there, and it got me wondering: 1. As callers, what do you do when a bunch of intermediate and/or beginner dancers show up to an advanced session? 2. As organizers, what do you do to try and keep your advanced sessions... advanced? (Either in messaging or at the dance itself?) Obviously I'm not advocating for kicking anyone out, but if a bunch of newbies show up at an advanced session, both they and the dancers who came for gnarly stuff are going to have a less-than-ideal time. 3. As dancers (/organizers/callers), how do we elevate the dance level of our local communities? I'm talking about increasing familiarity with some of the less common moves (contracorners, left hand chains, etc.) but also about building awareness of the dance and recovery skills, and technical things like giving satisfying weight, swinging correctly, guiding linemates into the next figure, etc. I welcome any thoughts and musings! Cheers, Maia (Brooklyn, NY) -- Maia McCormick (she/her) 917.279.8194