Re: [Callers] Calling for Absolute Beginners?

Maia -- I read you as saying that you're running a contra dance series for students at your school, students who don't go to outside dances. So you've got a hall full of beginners and many of them keep coming back (and other people show up], but they don't go to outside dances so they don't learn anything you don't teach them. What you're asking is how to hook them immediately and also how to build their dance skills. They're in an environment where they can just turn around and go back to the dorm if it isn't interesting. You're worried about turning them off of contra for the rest of their lives if you give them stuff they think is trivial and dumb, but if it's too hard they'll bail as well. You don't think they have patience for a lesson. Is that right? First thing: Whatever you're doing and however you do it, there are people who won't like it and will bail. It's not personal, and it's not a failure. You're giving people the chance to find out if they find something is fun, different people like different things, and a lot of the people who try it at all (especially under low-commitment conditions like just checking it out because it's on campus and they're free, rather than having to get into car or take a bus. It's like sticking your nose into a store when you're at the mall already; if it doesn't do anything for you, you just go on to the next one. There's a guy who keeps trying - with some success - to spread contra dancing to youth groups at Stanford. As I understand it, he uses recorded music (not at all restricted to "contra dance" music), does pretty much simple figures, is effectively gender-free without armbands (that is, doesn't police crossing over in improper dances), and deliberately doesn't run the dances very many times through, which means that there are more opportunities to jump aboard - people don't come in the door, see a dance going on and on, and turn around and walk out. People aren't stuck with incompetent or skeevy partners for very long. The recorded music means that it's not all alien sounding to contemporary people who come through the door. That said, if it were me, I'd run a series that was more like a barn dance than a contemporary contra. The all-longways-duple-improper-driving-music-trancey-dancing seems to me to only successfully bring newcomers on-board because it's a going concern, that is, because most of the people in the hall know what they're doing and can help the newcomers get where they need to be until they learn by osmosis (or never really learn, which does happen). I would pick up a bunch of dances in different formations, with swings - probably mostly from the English ceilidh tradition because there are a bunch of them there and they're quick teaches - drop the ones that require ranting or step-hops - always have something I can do no matter how many people are in the hall, play high-energy cheerful music (contra-dance band tracks more than ceilidh band tracks, with exceptions for the not-so-thuddy-and-slow ceilidh bands like the Committee Band or Peeping Tom), try to make sure that something was going on pretty constantly (because people will look in the door while you're having a two minute rest and decide it's dull), keep playing recorded music during the breaks, and anything else you can think of. Call only dances you believe in. The biggest determining factor in whether non-dancers think your dances are dumb is what you think about them and how you present them. (That's not what you tell them in words, but what your body language, tone of voice, etc, put forth. If you model digging it, they're way likelier to dig it - if they can be reached at all.) I personally believe fully in a bunch of pretty dumb dances - Galopede, Cumberland Square, Circassian Circle mixer, Circle Waltz mixer, La Bastringue. I even believe in Grand Marches (which are just follow the leader, really). There's nothing wrong with dumb dances, especially ones where you can fly all around. I don't personally believe in Le Brandy, despite having enjoyed dancing it, so I don't call that, and I suspect the butt-bumping looks pretty dorky to people who aren't doing it. If you want, you can do that, and also try to build somewhat in complexity over the course of the evening or the course of the semester. First-timers often drop away at the mid-dance break; if you assess that the people left understand phrasing, etc, move to longways contra then. Do a mini-workshop after you've earned their attention by giving them fun stuff to do and a sense of success. [And that's me, and I don't swear it'll work for you.] (I think there've been good suggestions about teaching the swing. I sometimes do beginner workshops by getting people walking around the room to show that it's smooth walking, not skipping, then start allemanding everybody in sight and insisting on getting good weight on the allemande. People who've had the feeling from allemanding can then work with others who haven't had it yet, and pretty soon most of the room can do a satisfying allemande. Once they have the satisfying shared weight feeling, it's easier to point them into how to do a walking or buzz step swing then if they start without having had the feeling.) Here's an article from people who've run on-campus dance series as non-students. This isn't 100% relevant to your circumstances - there's a lot about relating to students when you're not one, dealing with management as outsiders, etc - but maybe something will be helpful. http://germantowncountrydancers.org/campus.html And here's the country dance and song society starter kit for college dances: http://www.cdss.org/college-starter-kit.html I see that the programming page has this quote, which it looks like you're already on top of: * Be aware of the needs and insecurities of your audience. Plan styles and figures that are likely to seem cool and allow your audience to get over their initial hang-ups about dancing. /"At Brown, students were often embarrassed to do dances that had "dorky" figures, whereas they took to easy smoothly-flowing dances nicely. College students can be very self-conscious, and this can be a barrier to them dancing in the first place. At Brown dances, students who had never danced before would regularly cluster outside the door, peeking in to decide if they wanted to join. They would pay their money and walk through the door most often when what was going on inside looked 'cool' to the average college observer."*-*/*Julia Nickles, Brown alum* I hope this is the kind of answer that you're looking for and is maybe even of some help. -- Alan On 9/4/2012 8:45 AM, Maia McCormick wrote: