7 Sep
2011
7 Sep
'11
7:24 a.m.
Hello all,
I was wondering what fraction of callers have called for festivals? It seems
like nice information to have for folks as the develop as callers, and
Shared-Weight seemed a good place to do a quick informal poll.
To prevent flooding the list with lots of responses, please respond directly
to me at
Luke.Donev(a)gmail.com
I'll compile all the answers I get and send a summary to the list once the
responses peter out.
I'm going to arbitrarily define a festival as six or more hours of dancing,
and I'm interested in folks who have called for at least an hour (as opposed
to open mics and such, which are great, but different).
If this information has already been compiled, please respond with that
information.
Thanks!
--
Luke Donev
Luke.Donev(a)gmail.com
7 Sep
7 Sep
11:10 a.m.
I did my first "festival" this year - Gen'l Sam Houston Folk Festival in
Huntsville, TX - I was the only caller for all day Saturday and 1/2 day on
Sunday. It was all outdoors - extremely hot and humid - in fact, it was a
record breaking hottest day of the year. People didn't actually come to
dance and weren't expecting to dance. I was able to occasionally get a
little group to dance 1-2 very easy dances (Strip the Willow & a few other
4-6 couple dances) while the band played, but the surface was sloping &
grassy, there wasn't much shade. There was supposed to be designated
"helpers," but after the 1st dance, they disappeared and never came back,
although that didn't stop us. Sometimes, I'd just stand facing the crowd
and mimic swaying to the music, doing arm turns with the crowd, simple stuff
like that. On Sunday, there was a designated lady that I had to dismiss.
Anytime folks would show up to listen to the music, she'd "threaten" them
to
dance and nobody would stay and listen to the musicians. So I politely
asked her to leave; she was insulted; but the minute she walked away, a
crowd gathered and stayed to listen. One of the musicians looked at me and
said "Witness; witness." While we were dancing, the band would climb down
from the porch and play around us to make it way more fun for the dancers.
On Wed, Sep 7, 2011 at 7:24 AM, Luke Donev <luke.donev(a)gmail.com> wrote:
Hello all,
I was wondering what fraction of callers have called for festivals? It
seems
like nice information to have for folks as the develop as callers, and
Shared-Weight seemed a good place to do a quick informal poll.
To prevent flooding the list with lots of responses, please respond
directly
to me at
Luke.Donev(a)gmail.com
I'll compile all the answers I get and send a summary to the list once the
responses peter out.
I'm going to arbitrarily define a festival as six or more hours of dancing,
and I'm interested in folks who have called for at least an hour (as
opposed
to open mics and such, which are great, but different).
If this information has already been compiled, please respond with that
information.
Thanks!
--
Luke Donev
Luke.Donev(a)gmail.com
_______________________________________________
Callers mailing list
Callers(a)sharedweight.net
http://www.sharedweight.net/mailman/listinfo/callers
--
*Looking forward,
Linda S. Mrosko
7302 CR 2829
Mabank, Texas 75156
(903) 451-5535 (H)
(903) 288-4401 (cell)
www.towerwebsites.com/dancinglinda
*"We should consider every day lost on which we have not danced at least
once."
-- Friedrich Nietzsche
21 Sep
21 Sep
11:23 p.m.
Hello folks,
Shared-Weight (for which I'm grateful) has been abuzz with birthdays and
spawning new lists, but I did want to put out the results of the festival
poll I ran a little while ago.
It seems more a reflection on self-selection than the fraction of callers
that work festivals; I got over a dozen variants of 'I've called festivals'
to only a few 'nope, not me'. I also got several side conversations about my
motivations for asking and my odd definitions. I'm grateful for the
information, and also the discussions it spawned.
I personally am looking to move on to the festival circuit eventually, but
that wasn't my motivation for asking. I was discussing with a choreographer
the likelihood of having a need for a challenging dance. While I don't think
festivals need, warrant, or are necessarily good venues for challenging
dances; in my mind a caller that was working festivals was much more likely
to be in a position at some point where a challenging dance was called for
(and be able to teach it well). It's certainly not a one-to-one
relationship; but I was trying to estimate numbers, and that's how my mind
framed it.
I'm now wondering how many active contra dance callers are out there (say,
called an evening of dancing in the past year?), but I don't think a
shared-weight survey would answer that anyway. I'm guessing somewhere
between 100 and 1000 (for an order of magnitude).
Thanks again for the information and discussions. Keeps my mind turning.
On Wed, Sep 7, 2011 at 8:24 AM, Luke Donev <luke.donev(a)gmail.com> wrote:
Hello all,
I was wondering what fraction of callers have called for festivals? It
seems like nice information to have for folks as the develop as callers, and
Shared-Weight seemed a good place to do a quick informal poll.
To prevent flooding the list with lots of responses, please respond
directly to me at
Luke.Donev(a)gmail.com
I'll compile all the answers I get and send a summary to the list once the
responses peter out.
I'm going to arbitrarily define a festival as six or more hours of dancing,
and I'm interested in folks who have called for at least an hour (as opposed
to open mics and such, which are great, but different).
If this information has already been compiled, please respond with that
information.
Thanks!
--
Luke Donev
Luke.Donev(a)gmail.com
--
Luke Donev
Luke.Donev(a)gmail.com
4598
days inactive
4613
days old
contracallers@lists.sharedweight.net
2 comments
2 participants
participants (2)
-
Linda Mrosko -
Luke Donev