It's possible, if not likely, that what I'm calling "seems to have no sense of flow" has different causes for different people at different times. I've definitely seen it happening at gents/ladies dances as well as at larks/robins dances as well as at English dances. When I lead a beginner session at a larks/robins dance I introduce role names when teaching the swing, emphasize that larks open on the left, ravens/robins on the right, and do a circle mixer that's just into the center and back, swing the next etc, repeating the larks left robins right thing. So they get to hear the role name a lot.

Of course new comers often take quite a while to get sorted regardless. Last Sunday I called a single contra dance at a party - the party honored a queer activist who also liked contra dancing, so the honoree wanted there to be a dance, although hardly anybody at the party had done it before. Did a Haste-to-the-Wedding variant which only had a partner swing, felt no need to use any role names at all (beyond partner and neighbor) and every foursome one couple was in spent about 6 of the 8 beats available to do a right hand star getting the star organized. I couldn't see what was going on, but they'd pass through and circle on time, and then their foursome would be huddled like the Peanuts kids around the sad little tree in the Christmas special and then a star would start moving.

What I'm talking about here is that there's choreography that seems fairly inevitable - if you're going to circle left into a half-poussette isn't the probable direction of the half-poussette pretty obvious, or if you did a clockwise half poussette into a mad robin why should you even have to use a role name to say who goes through the middle first? Getting it wrong requires fighting your momentum - and some people will do that. [Although if they're generally tentative, or late, or executing one call and stopping and then executing the next call, then they don't have appropriate momentum anyway.]

From: Callers <callers-bounces@lists.sharedweight.net> on behalf of tom hinds via Callers <callers@lists.sharedweight.net>
Sent: Sunday, September 29, 2019 5:44 AM
To: callers@lists.sharedweight.net <callers@lists.sharedweight.net>
Subject: [Callers] What can you do.....?

Alan,

You raise an interesting question. After I’ve had time to sleep on it, I’ve come up with some other issues to raise and.discuss.

I’m curious if you have a beginning workshop before the dance.

In my opinion the skills needed for a new dancer to not only survive their first dance but to actually enjoy it are many And that means having a beginning session that approximates as close as possible the dance itself.

In your email you mention larks and ravens. If you do have a beginning workshop, are the newbies given the opportunity to practice/react to their new titles? Not having that opportunity to practice reacting to their new titles may cause a bit of confusion on the dance floor.

Tom

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