I took Diane Silver's 5-day Callers Class at JC Campbell Folk School last June. It was excellent, without exception. Personally, I'd recommend contacting her for advice.
I'm leading some caller training right now
and something that went really well, after our first couple of sessions,
was they each went away and wrote their own dance (I told them they
could either write a dance or find a dance online, but they both elected
to write their own)
then the next time we met, we workshopped their dances-
we wrote each dance out on a big sheet of paper and discussed the
choices and how they flow together, and what hiccups they might encounter,
what tweaks might need to be made
once the dance was "finalized", we got the person who chose the dance to
do a walkthrough.
then we paused and talked about any teaching aspects that were
interesting, or that we might do differently, etc.
And then the person called it while we danced it about 6 times
through...
And then we then got together again to discuss what we liked about it,
and what we might change, or any other suggestions/issues, points of
interest etc.
It lead to great discussions and lots of learning, even for me the
workshop leader!
Katherine K in Halifax
I'm going to be leading a series
of caller discussions/workshops in the next while. (This is a new thing
for me. I'm very excited as there's always so much to learn from each
other. :))
I'm wondering....
-->Are
there any activities that stood out as being really awesome from caller
workshops you've attended/led?
-->Any discussion
topics/ways to frame discussions that excited you?
I've
been sketching things out and as of right now, I'm really excited to
have a series of questions that prompt discussion among the group.
(Maybe stickies/stickers on poster boards as part of this.) The
questions range from the why of it all, presentation/performance
considerations, teaching, prompting, repertoire, etc.... ... I'm trying
to figure out some key questions to prompt the discussion. Here are just
a few of the many prompts I'm thinking about....
What do you see as the value of trad dances/dancing?
What do you get out of dancing? What do you think others get out of it?
What is your motivation for calling? What do
you think you get/might get out of calling?
Characteristics of a great caller? Callers you
like (AND why)?
What do the dancers need in the prompting? (Anything
specific for beginner dancers in particular?)
What need to/should know
to know about a dance to call it really well?
What is key in band
communication…. At the start of the evening? Before/during/at end of
each
dance? At the end of the evening? Before the day of the gig?
I'll also be
creating a framework for safe feedback while we practice teaching and
prompting dances.