In general, I'd say to prepare mostly the same easiness-level of dances, mostly different dances, a repeat of whatever the most popular dance was, and have a couple slightly more challenging ones - with progression, etc - up your sleeve but without any emotional investment in actually using them. Expect very little to carry over to a second dance five months later. Maybe more facility in getting lined up, but also (if you're lucky) they'll bring friends with no experience. -- Alan On 10/24/18 10:25 AM, Allison Jonjak via Callers wrote: Hi all, I hail from a rural area with no nearby dance communities. This June I held a free community barn dance, featuring lots of Linda Leslie's "very easy dances". Through the magic of newspapers I was able to connect with a string band, and we had about 25 dancers, lots of whom left their email addresses 'so you can invite us again next time.' I'll head home for the holidays, the band is willing and the hall is willing, so I'm planning to host another dance. The question is: should I prepare -the same dances -the same easiness-level of dances, but different actual dances -a dance or two that uses progressions? The dancers in June learned very quickly, and aced the proto-progressions in both Jefferson & Liberty, and Peak Bagger. How much of that practice in June do I expect to carry forward to November? Here was the program I wound up calling, https://contradb.com/programs/76 , pardon that the calling notes are mixed in with my followup notes. Here were the dances I had prepared: https://contradb.com/programs/71 Thanks all in advance for your help! -- Allison Jonjak, M.S., E.I.T. allisonjonjak(a)gmail.com allisonjonjak.com _______________________________________________ List Name: Callers mailing list List Address: Callers(a)lists.sharedweight.net Archives: https://www.mail-archive.com/callers@lists.sharedweight.net/ _______________________________________________ List Name: Callers mailing list List Address: Callers(a)lists.sharedweight.net Archives: https://www.mail-archive.com/callers@lists.sharedweight.net/

Good advice from both Alan and Rich. I agree with Rich that you could repeat more than one well-received dance from last time. Alan wrote: - up your sleeve but without any emotional investment in actually using them. Definitely agree on the "without any emotional investment" part. Long-term, do you have an ambition for these events to evolve into "contra" dances, or would you be happy as a clam to keep having events where facility at ending a swing side-by-side with the _____ on the left and the _____ on the right is not an important skill, so long as you have a room full of smiling dancers? I have a few comments and questions about your notes: The notes say "beginner's lesson (circle, Lark Raven, ...)" but the dance descriptions use "ladles" and "gentlespoons". What terms did you actually use? If you used "Larks" and "Ravens", did you say anything at all about their relation to traditional gender roles? In practice how much correlation was there between what people looked like and which role they danced in? Leaving aside the waltz and the polka, it looks like the only two dances where the roles of Lark/Gentlespoon vs. Raven/Ladle were significant were the roll away dance and Mad Scatter. Notes on the roll away dance say "succeeded at walkthrough, weren't going to make it through the dance." If you could tell, did the confusion seem to have to do with figuring out wha was in what role, or was it mostly about something else, such as getting from the star to the lines of four? [Two side comments on that dance: (1) Notes say "This variation is Wade Pearson's, removing the right-left-through. ...", but the "original" version you link to doesn't have a right and left through. It has a cross trail. (2) Personally, I don't think it would be a great loss to drop this dance from the repertoire, regardless of the role terminology or the manner of setting up the lines of four. I could say more on both points but don't want to go even further off topic.] The other dance description that mentions the roles is Mad Scatter. How did that work out in practice? I note that it doesn't really matter which member of each pair goes into the center for an allemande or star and which one orbits, provided nobody minds who they get for new partner. But I'm curious about what actually happened. Notes on Mad Scatter say "Avoid a mixer last even though they voted for it." Do you have reason to believe that people were disappointed about that? I certainly know of many dance series where people would bristle at having a mixer as the "last" dance of the evening (even if followed by a waltz as the really last dance), but I'm wondering whether you actually sensed such bristling at your event. Note also Rich's comment on ending a barn dance with a circle mixer. --Jim _______________________________________________ List Name: Callers mailing list List Address: Callers(a)lists.sharedweight.net Archives: https://www.mail-archive.com/callers@lists.sharedweight.net/