As a beneficiary of Bob and Martha's Calling parties I can't think of a
better environment to learn calling skills.  They combine practice with
live dancers, instantanious feedback on what you are doing right and what
you can improve upon and access to several really good mentors.  Thanks
Martha, Bob, Dale, Karen and the other callers who occasionally drop in.
I developed an interest in choreography when I began calling, and as Martha
said, the calling parties are the ideal environment to try out new dances.
If you would like to see the process in action, check out the link below.
 
 Today's Topics:
   1. Re: New choreo list / traffic volume (Martha Edwards)
   2. Re: Mentorship for Choreographers (Martha Edwards)
 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
 Message: 1
 Date: Fri, 11 May 2012 13:34:29 -0500
 From: Martha Edwards <meedwards(a)westendweb.com>
 To: "Caller's discussion list" <callers(a)sharedweight.net>
 Subject: Re: [Callers] New choreo list / traffic volume
 Message-ID:
        <CAJjmMcNf=kM+GFbGsCCA7+PxTwO9qia6JW23wj-a5UYKD9SZEg(a)mail.gmail.com
  
 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8
 I'm definitely in favor of one list, and yes, list-serve ettiquette demands
 deleting everything except what is relevant to your post.  Also,
 remembering to make the subject line actually reflect the discussion is
 key, although I'm not really happy to see discussions bifurcated when
 someone makes a small change to the subject line.
 Perhaps what could help is a code word in the subject - like a tag -
 "newdance", say, or "choreo" or whatever. Those of us who use email
 filtering could then use our email settings to automatically delete the
 posts in question, or, like me, automatically file them in a special folder
 for later viewing.
 M
 E
 On Thu, May 10, 2012 at 9:42 PM, Paul Wilde <zenyente(a)gmail.com> wrote:
 > I totally agree w/ Chrissy, John, & Hilton,
  
 > Please delete everything that has
already been posted which is not
 > absolutely essential to your new post.
  
 > Thank you everyone,
 > Paul
 > _______________________________________________
 > Callers mailing list
 > Callers(a)sharedweight.net
 > 
http://www.sharedweight.net/mailman/listinfo/callers
  
 --
 As you set out for Ithaka, pray that your journey be long, full of
 adventure, full of discovery...
 May there be many summer mornings when, with what pleasure, with what joy,
 you enter harbors you're seeing for the first time.
 ~Constantine Cavafy, "Ithaka" 1911
 ------------------------------
 Message: 2
 Date: Fri, 11 May 2012 13:57:01 -0500
 From: Martha Edwards <meedwards(a)westendweb.com>
 To: "Caller's discussion list" <callers(a)sharedweight.net>
 Subject: Re: [Callers] Mentorship for Choreographers
 Message-ID:
        <CAJjmMcN6Vu3GN7vQ7NABspTuHnKen2wD1xPJAc1733PrQctUFQ(a)mail.gmail.com
  
 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8
 I've said this before, but this may be a good thread on which to repeat it.
 One of the unexpected delights of our Calling Parties, set up  to give us a
 place to call dances in private before we call them in public, to find out
 where the trouble spots might be, has been the development of dance
 writers.
 And not just our dance writers.
 A select group of people from around the country send us dances, and we try
 them out at our Calling Parties, take videos of the Good, the Bad, and the
 Ugly and send them back to the choreographer, who can tell where and why we
 went wrong, and whether we enjoyed it, both of which we often do. Voila!
 Instant mentorship, straight from the sorts of people who will be doing the
 dances, namely, dancers.
 You could do the same thing. Buy a camera (ours is a Zoom, since we first
 wanted a pretty good sound recorder) and a gorillapod/tripod and invite
 over some people, call your dance and see where it needs to go back to the
 drawing board. I've seen some dances go through ten or more revisions over
 several months - but in the end, they turned into a dance for the ages.
 If you do this, you will never have to waste dancers' time at a regular
 dance with something that just doesn't work.  Or, if it does work, but just
 needs better calling, you'll have a place to make that happen, too.
 Start having Calling Parties!
 M
 E
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