[Callers] Re: Advanced dances gone awry

Most of my experience with this comes from the ECD world rather than contra. That said... 1. As a caller, I teach to who is there regardless of how the dance is advertised. This means flexibility, ability to shift expectations, shift my program, work on my patience. Sometimes this means for a particular dance, from the mic I invite 'if you are new or struggled with the last dance, you'll have more fun watching this next one' and follow it by an easy dance. I may also need to encourage attitude adjustment if the 'advanced' dancers are being cranky (lots of ways to do this, not going to take the time right now). And, there are lots of ways to have an 'advanced' dance. Complicated choreography is one. Less teaching/prompting is another. Offering things such as (usually easy) no walk through dances is another. Relatively accessible dances with extra time to teach dancing well is another. 2. As organizers, what do you do to try and keep your advanced sessions... advanced? I'm with Julian on being against kicking people out. It is not the kind of community I want, can backfire in a big way, and make people really unhappy. I hadn't thought about the economic injustice aspect of it, so thanks for that. I'm also fine with having advanced dances. And the messaging needs to be super clear. I wouldn't use words like 'advanced' or 'experienced' but rather outline the skills needed and the expectations, e.g., comfort with the following figures (ability to just do them), ability to recover quickly, ability to learn quickly, ability to dance without prompting...whatever your group decides are the features for the dance. Perhaps say what will and won't be taught, one walkthrough only with rolling start... And not everyone will get the message. That's life. 3. As dancers (/organizers/callers), how do we elevate the dance level of our local communities? Practice kindness, teach/model attitude of 'mistakes are awesome - it's how you learn, it can lead to laughter if you let it', teach/model recovery skills. Add skills workshops into the mix. Fun for skilled, unskilled, experienced, inexperienced dancers. Can be a special session prior to dance (or the first X amount of time of a regular dance) or at a special time/place. Can be about figures, social skills, dancing well... In my mind, part of being an advanced dancer is the ability and joyful attitude to dance with anyone regardless of skill or expectation of why you came. That is another skill to teach. Brooke Friendly Ashland OR On Mon, Apr 17, 2023 at 12:42 PM jim saxe via Contra Callers < contracallers(a)lists.sharedweight.net&gt; wrote: