As someone who works full-time and has repeatedly reached out to weekend organizers in the past and gotten the standard "Oh, are you calling any weekends soon?" and "It would be good if you could tour through [X/Y/Z multi-city sprawling metro area] so dancers could get familiar with you." ... I 100% agree that it feels impossible to break into the scene unless you're already in the scene. Weekend organizers holding on to the original bookings that got pushed back because of the pandemic has made this a bit worse, as well, with many weekends booked through the end of 2024 (this one I get - it's just also miring things further).
Following this thread with deep interest and hoping there's some deep secret to get out of this Heller-ian whirlpool.
On Thu, Mar 16, 2023, at 10:38 AM, Winston, Alan P. via Contra Callers wrote:
Hi, Julian --
I'll await other answers with interest, since I similarly don't have a caller website and it's a Project I could theoretically do but am rather overwhelmed by. (Pre-pandemic I was getting all the gigs I could realistically handle with a full-time job, more outside of contra than in ****
I also want to empathize with you about being reluctant to self-promote, reach out to organizers, etc, for fear of being obnoxious, although when I have my series organizer hat on I'm usually happy to hear from out-of-town callers/bands who will be coming to my area anyway. But I've never programmed a weekend or camp so I don't know how that feels; my impression locally is that programmers often have a vision and some favorites already.
-- Alan
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Sent: Thursday, March 16, 2023 8:51 AM
To: Shared Weight Contra Callers
Subject: [Callers] Asking For Website Help and Self-Promotion Question
Hi callers,
Website help request:
As I've been ramping up my accepting gigs again post-shutdown, I'm realizing that I've put off my "get an actual website" too long.
Any suggestions for website designers for caller pages or contra performer pages?
I can provide photographs myself, for what that's worth.
This is one of those things where, yeah, I could trudge through it myself with a DIY site-builder attached to a standard web host or Square, but I do UX Design as my 40-hour-a-week job and I already have many things on my plate, and I just really haven't found motivation to take on Another Project. So I really just want to be able to hand someone some money and know I'll get a good product that isn't needlessly complex.
Self-promotion perspective request:
I'm also looking for ways to appropriately do self-promotion as a caller.
I love doing series dances, and also love doing the dances for groups with lots of new folks, too. But I also would enjoy expanding doing more special events, and am getting more comfortable with traveling again, pandemic-wise.
There's this sort of odd condition where the A-List Well-Known Callers don't need to advertise, but to get there, you need to either/both advertise and/or have your summers off so you can do All The Tours and All The Summer Camps. On top of that, New England is kind of a funny area because we have so many weekly/monthly series dances that we don't have big dance weekends like pretty much everywhere else in the country.
And ... I dunno, for many of us, there's an unknown of "How much self-promotion until you become pushy / obnoxious?"
I've been calling for 11 years. Before the pandemic I was doing 30-40 gigs a year, including some wedding/One-Night-Stand events and smattering of special events. I've headlined at Flurry in 2018 and got positive feedback. I known where I'm at in terms of effectively choosing and teaching dances from simple through advanced. I solicit feedback from organizers I call dances for. And I know that being an advocate for Larks/Robins as well as dancer-safety has been a black mark for me in some bookers' minds.
But I still get people being like "Oh, how long have you been calling?" --- I realize part of this is the name change from Ron to Julian, but, part of it is definitely hesitation to like, I dunno, email organizers I don't personally know asking about dance weekends or whatnot. Maybe there's partly the "imposter syndrome" in there as well.
One thing I do know is that I now have no recent good video of me calling, which I'm earmarking as part of the website project.
Perspective on self-promotion is appreciated, and perspective for anyone who also books dances is appreciated.
In dance,
Julian Blechner
he/him
(Western Mass, USA)
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