Hi All,
I've been thinking a lot about calling for beginner dancers. I've seen big changes in the last few years where our dances now often have more than 50% newcomers.
As a relatively new caller. I have some observations and ideas, and I'd love perspective from people who are more experienced.
Walkthroughs:
With experienced dancers, you can do an efficient walkthrough and teach a figure in the context of the dance. With beginners, I've seen walkthroughs fall apart because by the time you've explained a move and dealt with the group that has gotten all scrambled, the dancers have completely forgotten where they are in the walkthrough and where they started the dance. This is leading me towards the idea of isolating new figures *before* the walkthrough: If it's the first time doing a move, teach the move first, and then do the walkthrough that includes this move. "This dance has a new figure called a Robin's Chain. It works like this.... <chain stuff>. That looks great. Now let's learn the dance...."
Also, with experienced dancers, people "get it" during the dance, so you can do two walkthroughs and even if some people are confused ii will straighten itself out. With new dancers it feels much more important that everyone succeed in the walkthroughs because confusion can get worse instead of better. But at some point you can't keep doing walkthroughs. My gut instinct is that if I teach the figures before and can't explain the dance in two walkthroughs then I need to get better at walkthroughs or teach easier dances.
Thoughts?
Caller Style:
I really like making each call four counts as it provides predictable rhythm to the calling:
1,2,3,4, WITH your | PARTner | BALance and | SWING
For some calls I can give the destination location, or the destination person:
"Robins, Chain, Across the, Set"
"Neighbor, Dosido, to NEW, Neighbor"
vs
"Robins, Chain, To your, Partner"
"Neighbor, DoSido, Once and a, half"
To your partner seems more clear, but I can also see that having two different people in the call could create confusion. Does one format work better in your experience?
Related, I find the most annoying figures to call are 1.5 figures. There's just no way to say
"New Neighbor Allemande Left Once and a Half" in four beats. Also, beginners struggle parsing 1.5x as trading places, especially across the set.
It seems like a lot of callers drop the Allemande and just shorten it to "Left" or "Right". Which probably is fine after two clear walkthroughs.
So, which do you prefer? Do you have other ideas?
Robins, Allemande, Left, Across
Robins, Left, to Trade, places
Robins, Left, Once, and a Half
Robins, Left, to Your, Partner
Robins, Do si, do, across
Anyway, just thinking aloud and curious what other peoples thoughts are.
Taco