Tom, thank you for your comments. They echo some comments that Lisa gave me offline about the order of the first half. So I experimented with re-arranging the first half dances and came up with something I like better. Lisa's comment was that teaching a half hey is easier than teaching a full one, so I swapped The Second Time Around and Carousel and made a couple of other changes. Here is the result: Forgotten Treasure Esmerelda's Revenge The Second Time Around The Baby Rose Marian's Delight (without Mods) Carousel (Alt: Mary Cay's Reel) Square Affair The second half is the same as below. Now the do-si-do 1+1/2 and the Star Promenade fit better into the program and we have a better buildup to Carousel. Just two more days to go! On a side note: A funny thing happened to me on the way to the square dance... 8^) As some of you know, I go Modern Western Square Dancing on Tuesday nights at MIT. Well, this past Tuesday, the MIT contra dance was across the hall from Tech Squares. The caller didn't show that night. Clark, who likes to bounce between the two dances, came in and told Seth and I about it and asked if we could remember any dances to go call. I volunteered (after some thought) that I could remember The Baby Rose off the top of my head. So I went across the hall and called it. After trading off with the organizer trying to remember dances a couple of times (and mangling them), I went to my car and got my cards for Saturday's program and called the second half from them. The crowd was small (I usually was calling to a group of 6-10 dancers). Some friends were in the band and were easy to work with. It was great, because I had a chance to practice a few of my dances for Saturday, and I didn't have any chance to worry and get nervous, so I was pretty relaxed about it. The really amusing thing was watching all of the Tech Squares people (who had heard what was going on) kept coming across the hall to poke their heads in and see what was happening. I suppose it looked pretty funny with me, in shorts and a Tech Squares T-shirt, standing at the head of a contra dance line, calling the action. 8^) The organizer took my information, and she might contact me to call an evening there... 8^) All the best, Chris Chris Weiler wrote:

Warning: this is going to be a fairly detailed self-critique. The short version is that the evening went well. No one got hurt, and people enjoyed themselves. We had about 20+ people and I covered my gas money for the trip down. Amy's evaluation was that I handled the crowd well. We had one couple that were absolute beginners and a couple of people that were relatively new, and one busybody who kept trying to teach the new couple figures that I was teaching. 8^) The original plan for the evening is at the end of the e-mail. Details: The evening started off slow. We only had 3 couples for the first dance. It gave me the opportunity to make a joke about not-so-long lines forward and back. I decided that we didn't have enough people (although we had 5 or 6 couples now) to do the circle mixer, so I switched the order with Second Time Around at Amy's suggestion. Unfortunately, this is where the new couple joined in (and danced with each other). We ended up spending a fair amount of time walking through the dance until they could get through the 1/2 hey. This is where the busybody made things difficult. It took me a little while to get people's attention back and recruit a demonstration set. People were very patient throughout the process. After the dance got started, I attempted to replace the gypsies with balances to help the new people, but was ignored by the experienced dancers. I also learned to make sure that I tell the experienced dancers that it was a 1/2 hey before I ran through the shoulder passes. Esmerelda's Revenge went well. I need to find some better words to describe the return promenade. I think that it would be too easy to face your partner along the ring instead of into and out of the center. I used the words: "face your partner squarely" and was met with many "huh?"s. There weren't any problems with The Baby Rose. I had called this before (at Pinewoods) and was comfortable with the teaching and calling. Marian's delight also went well. I called it, even with Clark's comment about the difficulty of the progression. It was interesting to watch, how after the first three times through with everyone being late for the Neighbor Bal.&Sw. that almost immediately most people were on time. I just kept calling it on time, and the dancers learned how to end early enough to give time time to progress. I also watched people skip the butterfly whirl when they had taken too long. At this point, I realized that I had been running the dances long (plus the extended walk through for Second Time Around) and that it was 9:15 and I had two more dances to do. After a quick conversation with Amy and Chuck (who was at the head of the line), we decided to run the first half long since we knew that we would lose a lot of people at the break. So I called Carousel, again without any problems. At this point the new couple had decided that they were done, and sat out the rest of the evening (although they stayed until the end and danced some Cajun during the break). Up until this point almost every dance had started with either a Neighbor Bal. & Sw., or a Neighbor Gypsy & Swing. I caught a couple of amused glances the last couple of dances from dancers who noticed. Square Affair also went well. I am still having problems with the timing of the calls for the second half of the square thru. I always get better, but the first and second times through I'm late. We took the break and as we thought, we lost 3 or 4 couples. Midwest Folklore started things off well. I didn't realize that it's pretty difficult for the dancers to remember the slide left progression. I ended up calling it for 90% of the dance. At this point we lost more people. I realized that with 4 couples, a shadow dance (Another Nice Combo) made no sense, so I skipped to Zoe and Me. Again, I learned that I needed to plan my words to be more efficient. I had problems with the teaching of the "flatten to a wave" concept. Once they got it, they got it, though. Beyond this, we lost even more people, and didn't have enough dancers to continue the dance, so we ended the evening at 10:30. I think that the fact that I ran the dances long in the first half burned some people out. I needed to do better at watching the clock and identifying the top couple at the beginning of the dance. Amy and Jonathan were playing great music, as always, and quoting Christmas carols in the middle of the dances. This had the side effect of making Amy lose her place in the dance, so I had to be on top of knowing whether we were in the A2 or the B1 so I could tell her. The things that I think that I did well are: I had good timing with my calls (just a little rough). Most of my teaching went very well with only one walk through. I did a fairly good job of reading the crowd and knowing when to walk it through again, or realizing that the dancers didn't understand my instructions and giving them new words to help them. I also did well at evaluating which dances would work with the current makeup of dancers each time and making sure that the dance I programmed worked before I called it (except for 2nd time around when I didn't realize the new couple had joined). Amy expressed her interest in hiring me again if she has some open dates. 8^) (Taking any trips soon, Linda?) Whoohooo! Chris Chris Weiler wrote: