Hi All,

 

This is the first chance I've had to sit down and write an e-mail about my pilgrimage to Nelson, New Hampshire for their Monday night open mic. dance.

 

It started with a long drive that started on the main New Hampshire highways, continued on the secondary highways, transitioning to driving through the forest on bouncy back roads that feel like you're a long way from anywhere and ending with the welcoming town square and the glow of the town hall. Everyone was welcoming inside, too, and it didn't take long to feel at ease with the people there.

 

The open mic. is pretty informal. Lisa Sieverts organizes the callers and let's people know when they're going to go onstage. Don Primrose started off the evening calling 4 dances (impressively without a microphone). Bob McQuillen was sharing his stories and unique sense of humor from the piano. Rich Hart next took a turn calling a dance (at which point I was told that I was going up next to call 2 dances). At this point I quickly flipped through my dance cards and picked out a couple of dances which I felt would fit the crowd and the evening so far. Unfortunately, Bob left for the evening before I got on stage, but I had two good musicians to provide music.

 

I started off with You're Among Friends by Bob Issacs since we hadn't had any stars but had quite a few dances that started with neighbor bal. & swing. I didn't have any problems teaching the dance, but I didn't check the volume on the mic. before I started. After the dance started the dancers had trouble hearing me, so I projected my voice more to compensate until Lisa ducked out of line to turn me up. I recorded myself and listening to it now I can hear that I have a lot of work to do with my voice but my timing, word choice and sense of where we were in the dance and the music are good. I raise the tone of my voice at the end of most of my calls so it sounds like a question instead of a command. I've been practicing in the car this week to try and work on that before the "New Voices" dance on Sunday. I've been recording my practice sessions and believe me: it really drives home the points that you need to work on when you listen to them!

 

Next I called Carol Kopp's dance Marian's Delight. It has a nice star promenade/butterfly whirl move. It was here that I learned about Nelson Lines. It's a long lines forward and back, but while both lines go forward, only one line moves back to shift the set over. This is necessary because the back wall has a jog in it and the floor slopes towards the short side of the hall and the lines drift.

 

The crowd started around 15-20 people and grew to somewhere around 40 people and we finished the evening back around 15 people. After I called, one of the teenagers, Jeff, got up and called a couple of dances. He bravely called a medley for his second (and the last of the evening) dance. He's only called a few times and has a lot of work to do, but he has a great venue to practice in. 8^)

 

Lisa very kindly let me stay on her futon that night. It was very nice to have such a short drive after a dance! All in all it was a great experience and a lot of fun. 8^) It was great to dance with old friends and meet some new ones. I hope to be able to go there again soon (I need the practice!). If I can, I'm going to make it a regular thing so I can keep learning and growing while I'm trying to get booked for whole evenings.

 

Thank you once again for wading through one of my long winded stories. I hope people are educated or at least amused by my journey towards becoming a caller.

 

See you on the dance floor! Flurry here I come!

 

Chris