6 Feb
2008
6 Feb
'08
4:59 p.m.
if the experienced dancers are jumping the gun, i have no problem saying, early in the
evening, something like "i know a lot of you know this, but for my own (the
caller's) benefit, if everybody would do this TOGETHER, i can make sure everybody has
it and we'll be dancing sooner. thanks for your cooperation!"
as a matter of principle, i NEVER say "...this may be
difficult/hard/confusing..." EVER. the caller's in charge. if you tell them
it's hard, they'll believe you and it WILL be hard. if i say something like
"...this isn't hard, just a little different...", and i'm convincing,
then they won't think it's hard and it WON'T be hard!
i approach every dance assuming that the dancers CAN do whatever i ask. 99% of the time,
they believe/trust me, and there is no problem. i've been calling kathy
anderson's "tropical gentleman" lately, which has a celtic hey. many
callers have told me this is a "hard" figure and so they don't use it much,
or only for experienced dances. i find i have very few problems with figures like this as
long as i tell people they CAN do it. i've never had it break down, and i've had
a lot of beginners get through it with no problem - in fact, they often do better than
"experienced" dancers, because they have no conception that it should be
"hard" and they're more willing to follow directions.
of course, this only works if *I* know what i'm doing, and i explain things clearly
(and i'm not afraid to jump onto the floor and do a demo - a demo is worth a thousand
words, and a lot faster, too!!) my own personal experience is that very few dancers have
problems with *any* calls if my programming and teaching are appropriate to the crowd. if
a lot of dancers are having problems, it's almost certainly something i'm doing
wrong.
so - tell the dancers everything will go faster if they walk thru everything together and
tell them it's easy. be convincing, and both will be true.
barb
Date: Wed, 6 Feb 2008 14:34:34 -0500> From:
rich(a)harts.mv.com> To: callers(a)sharedweight.net> Subject: Re: [Callers] don't do
it yet!> > This happens a lot and I have a couple of approaches to it.> >
First, if most of the dancers know what they are doing (and there is no > knot of
newbies somewhere at the end of a line), I won't worry about > people jumping
ahead, as a detailed description is not necessary.> > If enough dancers may have a
problem with a specific call, I'll be > careful to set it up and explain it before
I call it. So, for example > after a ladies chain, I might say "The next call may
be difficult for > some.
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