Fun story from the category of no-notes, no music, 350 participants and dancing where and with whom you'd least expect:
Last summer Ellen and I were implored to throw not one but two "American" dance sessions at a European monastery (not named to preserve their privacy).  We didn't have any dance notes with us and no internet service; their piano needed repair and my travel keyboard didn't cut it; but we had a couple hours to prepare.  We recreated some all-and-everyone dances that we vaguely remembered and re-invented a couple more to put together a program of four or five dances.  I managed to find some music on my tablet that had 64-beat phrases at a good tempo and they had a really nice PA.  We went on to throw two dances with about 350 participants of all ages including monastics.  This will likely remain the most memorable and inspiring dance experience of my life.


At any rate, what we do for our usual two dance series:

For musicians: Linda Henry, one of the mentors of the series we started, taught us that a well-prepared band leader has two easy-to-call dances up their sleeve in case the caller is delayed.  In our case I have three: a scatter mixer (we have a few variations), a simple "nice to see you again" circle dance that we made up, and La Bastringue.  This relies heavily on the band being capable of carrying a dance without a caller to guide the flow.  There are a few scatter mixers in the on-line databases.  I recall Rick Mohr wrote one of them.

For callers: in case the band isn't ready, we have go-to square tunes that we play from iTunes, YouTube, etc.  We've used recordings from Great Bear, Elixir, Talking Heads and Earth Wind and Fire.

At John C. Campbell Folk School's Dance Musician's Week, Andy Davis, of New England Dancing Masters and one of our instructors, told this instructional story from his experience: His band was booked for a dance.  Fewer dancers than expected showed up.  The caller pulled out a set of spoons and asked the band to join the dancers.  The caller called and played the spoons.  Andy said it was a great time.  (I don't recall him saying who the caller was or if the caller played spoons the whole evening.)

Rob

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Robert Matson
Innovation Media Corp.
The Innovation Works, Inc.
Cell: (917) 626-2675



On Tue, Jan 21, 2025 at 12:37 PM sdgola--- via Contra Callers <contracallers@lists.sharedweight.net> wrote:
I was greeted at the door once by Organizers telling me that the scheduled caller was a no-show.  This was 5 minutes before the start of the dance (I was attending with the expectation of being a dancer).  The money box had a few scraps of paper with dances written on them, so we started with those.  I asked a couple of dancers to sit out and use their phones to look up dance figures while I got the dance going.  The originally booked caller had forgotten, so I became the caller for the full evening.

Now I carry a couple of printed programs with me.

Sue Gola
Princeton/Mt Airy

On Tuesday, January 21, 2025 at 01:21:01 PM EST, Colin Hume via Contra Callers <contracallers@lists.sharedweight.net> wrote:


On Tue, 21 Jan 2025 10:11:33 -0800, Gary Shapiro via Contra Callers wrote:
> I haven't been a contra caller for many years, but last night I dreamt I was at a dance and the caller did not show
> up. There were no other callers in attendance. So I got up there wondering what dances I knew by heart. I think I
> knew how A Nice Combination went. Then I woke up and thought about it some more. I decided that every dance venue
> should keep a dance program, with instructions, somewhere.

I've been in that situation at a Festival - the caller was delayed on the motorway - and I realised I only knew two
contras by heart, neither of which was a good one to start with.  I actually had my lap-top with all my dances on it,
but it was at the other venue.  I managed to remember Bob Dalsemer's "Maggie's Hobby".  I now have some cards
for a few contras and squares in my shoulder bag along with the other vital stuff like Mars Bars and cough medicine!

And yet I can remember lots of quite complicated English dances!

Colin Hume


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