1 Jan
2024
1 Jan
'24
11:50 p.m.
As a pretty experienced caller at this point (10+ years):
1. I very seldom practice my calling aloud. Most of the dances in my box
are ones I've called before, or have simple enough figures that I'm
comfortable coming up with my patter on the fly. At this point I have
muscle memory for prompting any of the basic moves in 4, 3, 2, or 1
beat(s). If I have a dance with a funky transition, lots of fast moves that
need to be prompted all in a row, etc., I'll spend a few minutes
workshopping patter for that particular bit of the dance. I don't do this
to music; for me, it's enough to get the rhythm of the call in my head, and
then putting it to music isn't a big deal. (I should mention I'm possibly
*too* cavalier about this, ha, and have definitely stumbled over the first
round of prompting a new-to-me dance, but for better or worse, I'm pretty
good at doing this by the seat of my pants these days.)
2. I don't practice to music.
3. For a regular evening dance, unless I need a program in advance for some
reason (e.g. to coordinate with a co-caller, to give the program to the
band), I tend to program my dances the day of. (In practice, it's "whenever
in the preceding week I have time", but often as late as the subway ride to
the gig.) Some dances in my box I could teach in my sleep, but I'm trying
to get better at reviewing the new(er)-to-me contras in a program before I
go onstage, and planning a bit of my walkthrough: what language will I use
to explain X concept, where are the potential pitfalls, what was harder
than expected the last time I called this dance?
Interesting question, and I'm enjoying reading everyone's answers!
m.
--
Maia McCormick (she/her)
917.279.8194
On Tue, Jan 2, 2024 at 12:11 AM Robert Setili via Contra Callers <
contracallers(a)lists.sharedweight.net> wrote:
Hi,
My wife and I are in our first year of calling whole programs, and they've
been fun and gone well.
Here are some tips we've learned from various callers that have coached us.
We've been drafting our program about 5-7
days ahead, to practice those
dances the most.
We use the built in voice recorder app on one
iphone, and music from
another device to record the walkthrough & calling the
entire dance,
starting with 4 word calls, and getting to 1-2 word calls about the 4th
time through, and then dropping out the calls that we think the dancers
will all remember. (often the swing, and maybe right before that). Then
we DANCE to the recording, which is fun, and spots any little things we
need to improve. Claire Takemori gave us this advice.
Claire also suggested videoing our walkthroughs
and calling to dancers,
which I hesitated a little, but we did the last 3 nights.
And we can learn
how to improve by watching or listening. (on youtube as
robandamandacaller(a)gmail.com)
Bob Isaacs strongly advises writing/ typing our
your walkthroughs for
each dance. And he gives feedback if we send them to him.
The
walkthrough begin concise and clear is very essential to the dancers
starting out great with good calling.
And when I revisit a written walkthrough after a month or more, I see lots
of opportunities to improve it. (We don't read from it at a dance, but
you learn what you want to try to do by writing it, and where the trickiest
figures / transitions are.
Doing the program a few days ahead lets you see
which figures will be
new each dance and need to be taught in the walkthrough.
We listen to lots of contra music in the car, on
spotify (Rodney Miller,
Toss the Possum, Ed Howe, etc) And there are some calling
practice
playlists, like one Seth Tepfer referred us to: by "callerboi". We started
counting to 8, but Bob & Ed suggested we count to 16 to start learning
whether we are in A1, A2, B1 or B2. This has helped a lot.
Use music that is similar to the band you will be
playing with
to practice and record calling the dances. For our December 23
dance, I
contacted Wolf Moon String Band and they kindly provided about 8 tracks
(since I couldn't find any examples on youtube or spotify).
How much do we practice? We are not that
musical and we have practiced
a ton, but maybe that will start to level off. But
the recording your
calling to challenging music and dancing to it is FANTASTIC practice with a
new dance, and recording the walkthrough. We were just at a week long
dance and it seemed maybe a couple open callers had probably never
practiced a few walkthroughs (just a handful).
In Atlanta we've been having a weekly calling
practice on Wed. for
Contra and English callers for over a year, and it's been
well attended and
we usually have 8-12 dancers. It's at a very generous dancer's house.
We definitely notice improvement from practicing!!
Hope this helps!
Rob
On Mon, Jan 1, 2024 at 11:13 AM Jonathan Sivier via Contra Callers <
contracallers(a)lists.sharedweight.net> wrote:
It depends on the dance event. For typical
contra dances I usually put
together a set of dances a few days in advance and run through them the day
before. I practice both the walk through and calling to recorded music.
Unless there is something special that usually is sufficient. When I first
started I would put together multiple lists of dances in case they were
needed, but I have found that last minute substitutions are easy enough to
do without having to formally make an alternate list.
For English dances I try to get my dance list together well in advance so
that I can get the list to the band to give them time to prepare the
music. At least a couple of weeks and often as much as a month. This
depends on the band so check with them.
For One Night Stands, and similar events, I'm usually doing dances that I
have done many, many times so I usually don't feel the need to prepare a
long way in advance. The day before I'll get my stuff together and go over
any dances that are new or that I haven't done as often.
For a dance weekend, or other more involved event, I will usually try to
be prepared at least a few weeks in advance. This depends on the type of
dancing and how much calling I'm scheduled to do.
I've been calling for around 30 years.
Jonathan
On 1/1/2024 9:12 AM, Mary Collins via Contra Callers wrote:
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Researching a discussion I had with a fellow
organizer.
As a caller, newbie, experienced, old hat experienced:
1. how often do you practice calling dances, esp new to you dances?
2. Do you practice to music?
3. How far in advance do you set and work through your program?
Thanks for any and all input.
Mary Collins
Fanklinville/Olean NY
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