Michael Fuerst wrote: That "egg beater" orbit overlap with the adjacent set is something that is either immediately intuitive to dancers, or it's not, it seems. And the interaction is fun (to me, therefore surely to you, too! lol) with surprised ladies/ robins finding an interloping gent/ lark (or vice versa, certainly) momentarily disturbing their allemande. It's also a lot smoother than doing "the squeeze" interpretive dance step that is the alternative to that overlap unless the whole set is stretched out to an indecently non-intimate degree! :)

As a dancer, if I'm at the end of a line and see that there are particularly lost-looking newbies in my foursome who are about to be "spat out" after the walkthrough, I'll sometimes rotate our foursome to make the new folks progress into the set so that they won't have to deal with turnaround confusion right away. If I don't find out until after the walkthrough is finished that it's a right-progressing Becket after all, then in my attempt to help I may have actually made it worse for them. So as a caller, I think it's always helpful to give people a heads up - either "line up Becket; this dance will progress to the right," or (my preference) "line up, take hands four, then turn one place to the right into Becket formation." It's true that a lot of dancers don't notice or care, but I think enough of us *do* care that it's worth giving just a word or two to those who are listening for it. As for identifying shadows, I find that unless I have *really* clear notes, if I try to identify the relevant shadow at the beginning of the walkthrough it often backfires on me. I usually prefer to just walk everyone through the dance until they actually get to the shadow part, and then tell them "remember this person." Koren Wake dancer, caller, musician Seattle WA On Tue, Feb 20, 2024 at 2:47 PM Harris Lapiroff via Contra Callers < contracallers(a)lists.sharedweight.net&gt; wrote:

Hi everyone, I had written this response to Ken’s question, and inadvertently sent it to him rather than the whole list. —— Hi Ken, Speaking for myself as a dancer, and as a person with ADHD and consequent subtle memory challenges, I find myself constructing a mental map of the flow of the entire set during walkthrough and early repeats to help me navigate the remainder of the dance. The more specific and complete the information I receive is, the more complete the initial model, and the less I have to literally keep relearning it as the dance proceeds. Being specifically informed CCW vs CW is a nugget that saves me the work of inferring which general model to use. It’s all slowly falling apart and will soon enough be gone completely. Easier to be replacing bricks at the top of the wall than to be constantly relaying the first course. I don’t have an autism diagnosis, but from my personal experience relating to those who do, I’d guess it may help at least some to be told explicitly what to expect at the whole-dance level. Going into a situation expecting one construct and ending up in a different one could be stressful. Finally, as to why people prefer or are indifferent to a priori meta-information about the dance sequence, I liken it to what happens when the band gets lost, puts in an extra phrase, and gets out of phase with the choreography. Some dancers are unperturbed, others get driven right up the wall. I’m the latter sort, as you might have guessed :-). How are all these people just dancing around this huge hole in the wall? Or maybe a better comparison is teaching a non-32-bar dance built around such music. Tell me ahead of time and it’ll save me some necessary mental steps. If not, I’ll notice and incorporate it soon enough. I’ll be fine, but depending on the night it could cost me disproportionate cognitive resources that I’m having to manage carefully. Thanks for asking the question - I appreciate your curiosity. It gave me a chance to examine for myself why things like that help me. -Joseph On Tue, Feb 20, 2024 at 2:15 PM Ken Panton via Contra Callers < contracallers(a)lists.sharedweight.net&gt; wrote: