this is a good policy, very relevant to both new and experienced dancers. i especially liked the "john does this well - get some pointers" part, and COMMUNICATE. here's my personal story, as a relatively new dancer doing something wrong without realizing it: i was at one of my first dance weekends, pilgrim's progress, i think, and at the point where i thought i knew everything and was cool on the dance floor. moving down the line during a dance, one of my neighbors, during the swing, murmured something like "see how much easier this is if you put your hand here". i'm guessing i had my hand someplace where i wasn't supporting myself at all and it hurt his arm. within the hour, i had three people tell me they liked the way i swung. so...thanks, william watson, for saying that one inconspicuous little sentence to me at the right time and in the right way. polite, positive, and timely comments can fix a lot of things. barb

Here, it's easy. We don't allow lifting people off the floor. We have one person with a very mild mental illness who wasn't judging very well when to do it and when not, and wasn't always doing it safely, so we just made it a rule, not to be broken, that no one does it, to make it easier for him to remember. We also have a board member who loves doing aerials, does them with safety and with permission and all other good stuff, but he can't do it at our dances either, just because the hard-and-fast rule is the only way we can keep the rest of us from being cut off at the knees when the other guy was swinging new dancers off their feet and their legs cut a six-foot circle sweep. I also saw a caller in Kansas City stop a dance once and tell a particularly aggressive dancer to stop lifting people off the ground. "I have liability here, and I'm not going to continue calling if you keep doing that." I think the dancers applauded. I had the pleasure of meeting Frankie Manning, who invented the aerial in swing dancing in 1935, and was particularly impressed with the amount of practice he and his partner did before they ever tried it on a dance floor - with mattresses covering the floor of his living room while they learned how. M E On Sat, Jul 9, 2011 at 10:22 AM, Greg McKenzie <grekenzie(a)gmail.com> wrote:

Mac asked about how other callerrs incorporate other formations into their programs. I call English (for 25+ years), barn dances, historical-themed (Regency/Early American, Civil War, Dickens) and contra (for the last five or so years, but only a few times a year). My answers are different for each kind of thing. For English, I typically call more duple minor (usually proper) than anything else, but try to mix it up with small-set dances (two-couple set, three-couple set, squares) and a triple minor or two in an evening. Since tunes go with particular dances, I also consider variety in mood, key, meter, and tempo when I'm making up the program. (I'll also use what I know about the musicians I have that night and try to keep away from notey reels for a fiddler with tendinitis, bias toward Bb tunes if I have a cello player, etc.) For barn dances, anything goes. Sicilians, threesome Sicilians, big circles, grand march, circle mixer, whatever. For historically-themed, it depends somewhat on what I can justify historically, so Regency has lots of longways duples and some triples, mixed with an occasional three-couple set (adapted from a triple minor, like Fandango, Prince William, etc), interspersed with waltzes. For Civil War / Victorian, Sicilians, threesome Sicilians, whole sets in longways formation (Gothic Dance, Virginia Reel/Roger de Coverley), mixed up with waltzes, polkas, schottisches and galops. Around here (SF Bay Area) if you do a whole evening of duple-minor improper contras at a contra dance, nobody complains about it. Some callers like to include a square or two in an evening. A noticeable number of people will sit down if they realize it's a square. (As a dancer, I've had a partner bail on me when she realized it was a square.) That doesn't happen as much at local weekend or week-long camps, but at regular dances with local callers, 10% or more of the people who'd be up for a contra sit down for a square. I'm not the miracle square dance caller who's going to change their minds about it, either, so I don't program squares. When I first started calling contras here, my ten-dance program might have a circle mixer in slot three and a triplet sometime after the break. I've had complaints relayed to me about calling 'gimmicky' dances, and I wasn't getting great response from the triplets, so I've dropped those. I want to get invited back to call again, and I don't need to change everybody's mind about what a good time is. My most recent program (a very successful outing in Monterey last month) had a circle mixer in slot three (setting the ground for the poussette figure I used in "Joyride" later) and a four-face-four right after the break, and I got positive response to both of those. (The music was great; if it weren't I could have had the best program in the world and it wouldn't have been a wonderful evening.) -- Alan -- =============================================================================== Alan Winston --- WINSTON(a)SSRL.SLAC.STANFORD.EDU Disclaimer: I speak only for myself, not SLAC or SSRL Phone: 650/926-3056 Paper mail to: SSRL -- SLAC BIN 99, 2575 Sand Hill Rd, Menlo Park CA 94025 ===============================================================================

We don't have "swing dance move" issues. We have caveman chest-bumping issues. There are 4-5 guys, 40s and 50s, who like to do a little jump and chest bump in the middle of heys. When they bump they let out a primitive, loud, shout/grunt. They only do it with each other, they have sense enough to know not to do it with others... It makes some people laugh, but others get uncomfortable because they don't know what else these guys are going to bump into. I've heard people say they try to stay out of the line those guys are in because of this action... Two of the guys are leaders on our dance committees. Martha, I like the KC woman's setting the table for the dance like s/he did. If the committees have a policy about dance behavior, they can make the caller, or one of them, tell the crowd the rules at the start of the dance. Some are too shy to enforce their own rules, sometimes... Keith Tuxhorn Austin TX

I often do a Circle Mixer and usually do a 4x4 if the crowd and size of the hall accommodates that. I have used Anne Fallon's Microschasmic (3 couple dance) in the 1st half to introduce the concept of contra corners - if I planned to do a CC dance in the 2nd half and had a goodly number of beginners show up. I always do a dance that flows around the Oval - as a dancer - I love variety in the flow and feel of the dances Mavis L McGaugh 510-814-8118 (answering machine-leave message) --- On Sat, 7/9/11, Richard Mckeever <macmck(a)ymail.com> wrote:

When David Millstone came to town for a chestnut workshop, he pointed out that in historical context the downtime of being inactive couple wasn't a bad thing (time for socializing, etc). In our dance last month it was mid 90's and pretty humid. To me that was a good opportunity for some dances with built in rest breaks. A proper petronella proved pretty popular. -Don Perley On Sat, Jul 9, 2011 at 5:12 PM, Richard Mckeever <macmck(a)ymail.com> wrote:

That was so short, Don, it could be called a shaggy puppy story. \bob peterson On Aug 2, 2011, at 3:01 PM, Donald Perley wrote: