A little while ago I posted a call for a replacement caller for our contradance at Burning Man. In that post I misidentified our caller who is planning to firedance up and down the side of the lines while calling - it is Tracy Wilkins. In the future we might also try to combine hooping and calling (it took a youtube search to make me aware how amazing hooping can be). Now that we have several replacement volunteers, I must drop off of this list for lack of time. But I thought before I go that I would present some of the ideas that we hope to explore many of which are relevant to this group. I should also say that we will be looking for adventurous experiment- friendly callers (and to generally spread the word to dancers/callers/musicians) into the indefinite future. There is also a nascent Western Square Dance camp at the festival (I don't know how experimental they are going to be.) The Vision Beyond all the usual magical music, dancing and camaraderie, I hope organizing this event will allow me to 'give something back' to contradancing. I hope first that we will attract a significant number of new young dancers at this huge heavily under 30 festival and that this will snowball (CA is one of the parts of the country that is graying and needs more young dancers). I hope we help broaden the contradancing subculture as a whole with new moves and dance structures - see my remarks here: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/burningmancontradance/message/13 I hope that we expand musical styles and technology. I hope that our use of video (looping slomo views from the side and from above with L and R labels of the relevant hands/ shoulders , etc) to enhance and speed up contradance instruction is perfected and spreads. I hope we can come up with ('tastefully' flashing or varying) reactive lighting that will reinforce the AABB structure of the music and give new dancers more cues to pick up on for their timing. And maybe we can solve the problem of finding a kind of lighting that is easy enough for older eyes to see with, but has the magic and romance of darker venues. At this year’s dance we will be providing water at both ends of all the lines – couples who are waiting out can reach up to a dangling tube with a beer tap and direct a flow of water into their mouths (the beer tap and nozzle will be inside a glowing silk flower so that no one puts the nozzle in their mouth, the whole system is NSF/ approved for potable water). There will be new dancers drawn in by a non-traditional approach who are then hooked and learn to love and support the long term survival of old time/traditional contradancing.