Re: [Callers] How much is too much?

I think you don't need to consider all the assumptions below, because I doubt that there is any hard and fast rule. What I find easiest in terms of dropping out is to wean the dancers off the cueing fairly rapidly. The first time through, if there are lots of beginners, I use a lot more words - e.g. face across and right and left through, or long lines forward and back. The next time I might say "right and left" or "long lines", and then the next time just "lines"). For most dances you can pretty quickly stop bothering to say "swing" - people tend to remember that they are supposed to do that. If there is a really good sequence that makes sense, I may call just the first call into it and leave the rest out pretty early. In the first few dances of the evening, you may have to call more times before you are able to drop out completely because the beginners are less experienced and are all dancing. Then they tire out and by dance three or four you can often drop calls out very quickly. But it also depends on the dances you are calling and the time of night and the heat of the hall. Heat and lateness will tax the brains of the dancers, and towards the end of the evening, especially in the summer in our non- air-conditioned hall here in San Diego, I often find that I have to start prompting much more again. And some dances, particularly those with two swings, may require almost continual prompting specifically after each swing, especially late in the evening, when the entire set may suddenly, in an amazing display of solidarity, all launch into lines forward and back, which was supposed to come after the second swing, not the first. It's a great chain reaction to watch, one person puts their hands out and the whole line telegraphs the motion and chaos ensues. Another thing I watch out for is beginners who are becoming #1 couples, especially if the ones and twos do different things and their 2s aren't able to help them much. Even if I haven't been calling at all for a while, I might pop in briefly with a cue for the clueless at a critical moment the first time they do it. And of course there are the occasional brain teaser dances that require more cueing than others. We have had a couple of callers come through here that were of the opinion they should call the dance through twice and then ignore the dancers, even if the dance was not going smoothly, and the dancers were not happy about it. I've heard the dancers yell out "Keep calling!" I do like to have people dancing to the music, not to me, so I try to call dances with good flow that can dance themselves, so to speak. I also like people to have a good experience dancing, a confidence-building experience. Weaning the dancers seems to be a good compromise for me to the "sink or swim" sudden cessation of prompting. Martha On Feb 11, 2011, at 9:00 AM, callers-request(a)sharedweight.net wrote: