23 Jan
2013
23 Jan
'13
2:06 p.m.
Ron wrote to Greg:
** Booking ahead is done because people want to dance
with a small subset
of dancers who are their friends / the "cool, hip dancers" / etc. **
So I don't, as a caller, make the assumption that you present. Instead, I
believe that unless a dance specifically fosters a new-dancer-friendly,
inclusive environment, and goes out of its way to post signs / e-mails /
promote discussion with callers / etc, dancers will generally see a narrow
view of what's going on at the dance. It's up to organizers and callers, I
believe, to specifically shape the dance to a friendly environment ...
... if that's the dance's goal.
Thanks Ron. I think we agree entirely about our goals. Shaping the dance
to a friendly environment is a goal implicit in the open, public nature of
our dances and in the accessibility of the dance form to people of all
skill and experience levels. As callers and leaders it is our role to
facilitate that.
It is true that many folks “want to dance with a small subset of dancers
who are their friends / the ‘cool, hip dancers’ / etc.” It is a natural
human tendency to form cliques and subgroups.
But it is also true that:
- People want to feel they are a part of something larger than
themselves.
- People enjoy sharing something they are passionate about with
new friends.
- The structure of the dance itself requires an empathetic
response from the dancers. We are all in this dance together and if anyone
fails we all fail.
- Said another way: Our own personal enjoyment depends upon the
success of newcomers in the hall. or Our "enjoyment-maximizing behavior"
includes dancing with first-timers.
- The caller is in a key position to provide leadership in this
process.
- There are numerous things the caller can do to make this process
both easy and fun for the regulars as well as for the newcomers.
It is always the caller’s fault. If the caller is not doing everything
possible to make it easy and fun for regulars to partner with first-time
dancers then any attribution of this problem to “selfish dancers” is
nothing more than a “blame the dancers” excuse for our own poor calling.
This is why I think of open, public contra dances as one of the greatest
challenges for a contra dance caller. The caller needs to know how to earn
and hold the attention of the hall. The instructions and calls need to be
clear, precise, structured using the most effective word order, and given
at precisely the time when the information is needed by the regulars so
that they can confidently lead their first-timer partners.
The sad fact is that most contra dance callers—including some very popular
and well known callers—either do not know how to do this effectively or
don’t believe that this is even their responsibility. Instead they resort
to a “blame the dancers” strategy. I know this because I did it myself for
more than a decade.
But if the dancers perceive the process of partnering with first-timers to
be a “duty” or “task” instead of one of the primary reasons they enjoy
attending open, public contra dances—and make the effort to drive two hours
to such a dance—this is the caller’s fault.
Sorry about that.
Alan wrote:
“…if we banned everybody who ever behaved selfishly
from contra dances
we'd have a lot of trouble filling our dance halls.”
Thank you Alan for being specific that it is the *behavior* the caller
needs to address, and not a certain “type” of dancer. When you adopt the
maxim that the caller takes responsibility for everything that happens in
the hall—which is the only sensible framing that offers us any hope to
”shape the dance to a friendly environment…”—then the caller will assume
the support of all of the regulars in this effort and give them what they
need to partner confidently with first-time dancers and to enjoy that
experience.
Our biggest obstacle to success in this effort is the “selfish dancer”
frame in our own brain which distracts us from the goal of better
calling. Yes,
it is true. Some dancers behave more selfishly at times than others. But
we can choose to “frame” the situation differently. We can choose to look
at this as a symptom of our calling, rather than a moral weakness in some
dancers. These folks might be reacting to our failure to make the process
easy and fun.
Instead of complaining about “selfish dancers” I think we would be better
served to discuss strategies, as callers, to better integrate the hall and
make it fun for everyone no matter who they are dancing with or where in
the hall they are dancing.
That’s the way I choose to look at it,
Greg McKenzie
****************
On Tue, Jan 22, 2013 at 5:32 AM, Alan Winston <winston(a)slac.stanford.edu>wrote;wrote:
On 1/21/2013 6:27 PM, Aahz Maruch quoted me:
Even if you did only want to dance with your friends, that is your
Everyone who comes to a contra dance is trying to engage in
enjoyment-maximizing behavior. There are usually plenty of other things
they could be doing with their Saturday night, and this thing is what they
decided would be most fun. So beyond the very basic rules - you kinda
have to do the figures the caller called, and do them with whoever you come
to in line; that's the basic contract - anything else is optional.
I personally don't want anybody dancing with the newbies who is doing it
solely out of a sense of duty, rather than because they hope to enjoy it or
because they're taking a big-picture view and realize that the activity
needs to integrate the newbies in order to survive so that they can keep
enjoying it.
Erik Hoffman has a thing about the stages of a contra dancer, and the
mature contra dancer - in his view - has passed through the crazy
flourishes and hottest partner phase already and is now concerned with the
happiness of the room; can enjoy helping a beginner through a dance as much
as being in a hot set with a hot partner, etc. I like to think that will
happen, although I look around the Bay Area and see several people who, it
seems to me, are not mature dancers even though they've been doing it for
twenty years; guys and gals who book every dance, often while in line for
the previous dance, do dips; appear - and of course I'm not in their heads
so who knows what's actually going on - to only partner with others they'd
like to date, etc, etc. And while that annoys me, it _is_ their perfect
right. They paid their ten bucks; they can try to have the kind of dance
experience they want to have. We're not going to toss them out for being
uncommunitarian. And we need their ten bucks. (Maybe not their individual
ten bucks - we can afford to bounce somebody for being creepy - but their
collective ten bucks; if we banned everybody who ever behaved selfishly
from contra dances we'd have a lot of trouble filling our dance halls.)
Also, what accounts for the prevalance of the meme that one "should
perfect
right. You have complete freedom to decline any offer you
don't want to accept for whatever reason and then accept an offer you
do want to accept. You are not required to offer an explanation.
(If you say no to Joe and then yes to Jerry and Joe's paying
attention, he'll get the message that you didn't want to dance with
him and his feelings may be hurt, but that's actually his business,
not yours. It would possibly be a kindness to Joe and to the
community to tell Joe "you twirl me too much" or "I don't like to do
dips" if there's some simple way he could alter his behavior that
would let you enjoy dancing with him, but it's not required, and just
saying "No, thank you" means you don't have to have a conversation and
can each try to find other partners. If you only ever dance with a
small subset of the people in the hall, other people will eventually
notice and have opinions - and that's still their business, not
yours.)
Not that I'm necessarily disagreeing with this, but how do you reconcile
what you're writing here with the meme that people "should" dance with
the newbies and the sidelined dancers?
never" turn down an offer to dance? (I tend
to fall into this camp and
I'm not really sure where I got it from.)
I was surprised recently to encounter the "If you decline an invitation
you must sit out that dance" meme in Jane Austen, although I've forgotten
where. I don't know if that's where it's coming from, though.
-- Alan
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