When calles at our dances do this, I lobby hard to not have them invited back. The message I get is "only I can be helpful to newcomers; you experienced dancers, don't even try." If you've got experienced dancers who are doing things that confuse newcomers, you (or someone) need to teach the newcomers how to be helpful. Preventing them from doing so is not a way to build a local dance. --Read Weaver Jamaica Plain, MA http://lcfd.org On Nov 25, 2012, at 9:42 PM, Michael Barraclough wrote:

Read wrote: It is an unfortunate incarnation of what I call the "don't do it yet" syndrome, where the caller orders the dancers NOT to do something and listen first. There are situations where this call might be needed...but not often. If the caller asks dancers to ignore a call more than once a night I'd call it a syndrome. I try to let the regular dancers do almost all of the teaching, if possible. I do offer some safety tips, etc. But my calls are directed almost entirely at the regulars. I assume that they will show others who will then quickly learn the calls. So...I guess I don't think calls need to always be descriptive...I'm still thinking about that one. A call like "angry robin," which is not descriptive, has no information for first-timers. That makes it a little more difficult for first-timers to learn. I avoid this figure for several reasons: The call is not friendly to first-timers. And there is no physical contact and that makes it more difficult for the regulars who know it to show it to others. Generally I design my calls to get the most essential information to the dancers first. I would never use the call "allemand left your neighbor," for example. That is a totally backwards call. I prefer "neighbor, left hand turn" primarily because it first identifies the target dancer and then it puts out the "left hand" information , which is what the dancers need to know to start moving. "Neighbor, left hand turn" also has two fewer syllables. - Greg McKenzie

I've been following Greg's sermons about minimal (to non-existent) pre-dance instruction with a bit of wonder...at first I thought there must be a din of micro-conversations going on within minor sets if the experienced dancers were expected to take on instruction but some of my confusion  was cleared up in the sentence Greg wrote below "And there is no physical contact and that makes it more difficult for the regulars who know it to show it to others."...which leads me to believe that Greg encourages experienced dancers to physically move (help move) newcomers into place. Regarding this, I must point out (after decades of calling and teaching social couple dancing) that there are many styles of learning...some people do not like or learn from being physically touched/shoved/nudged/pulled into place, even gently and with good intentions...reasons for this are numerous, but one is that some folks are verbal learners not kinesthetic learners...they need the words and the processing time from words to feet/hands to allow them to understand the moves. Others are visual learners...they could pick up a move from watching a demo but not from being pulled through the move themselves).  Unwanted 'physical' teaching freezes some of these folks; they learn nothing and may get resentful but there's no way in the midst on an ongoing dance to politely tell their manipulators they'd rather not learn that way. Yes, eye contact is lovely and helpful, and a ready hand in place to be allemanded is welcome but not all moves can be so facilitated. Seems to me that's why speech evolved: to communicate when physical contact or body language were less effective.   --- On Mon, 11/26/12, Greg McKenzie <grekenzie(a)gmail.com> wrote: From: Greg McKenzie <grekenzie(a)gmail.com> Subject: Re: [Callers] Named Moves To: "Caller's discussion list" <callers(a)sharedweight.net> Date: Monday, November 26, 2012, 7:18 AM Read wrote: It is an unfortunate incarnation of what I call the "don't do it yet" syndrome, where the caller orders the dancers NOT to do something and listen first.  There are situations where this call might be needed...but not often.  If the caller asks dancers to ignore a call more than once a night I'd call it a syndrome. I try to let the regular dancers do almost all of the teaching, if possible.  I do offer some safety tips, etc.  But my calls are directed almost entirely at the regulars.  I assume that they will show others who will then quickly learn the calls.  So...I guess I don't think calls need to always be descriptive...I'm still thinking about that one. A call like "angry robin," which is not descriptive, has no information for first-timers.  That makes it a little more difficult for first-timers to learn.  I avoid this figure for several reasons: The call is not friendly to first-timers.  And there is no physical contact and that makes it more difficult for the regulars who know it to show it to others. Generally I design my calls to get the most essential information to the dancers first.  I would never use the call "allemand left your neighbor," for example.  That is a totally backwards call.  I prefer "neighbor, left hand turn" primarily because it first identifies the target dancer and then it puts out the "left hand" information , which is what the dancers need to know to start moving. "Neighbor, left hand turn" also has two fewer syllables. - Greg McKenzie _______________________________________________ Callers mailing list Callers(a)sharedweight.net http://www.sharedweight.net/mailman/listinfo/callers