Re: [Callers] Publishing dances on the web - Contra Callers

6 Nov 2017

Hi, Luke

I surf the web regularly for new-to-me choreography.  When I do, I almost
always am looking up the collection of a choreographer I just heard of,
met, or whose choreography I just encountered at an event.  In this case, I
look through the whole collection and pick out the ones that fit my
repertoire.  As such, it is not typically important to me to see
categories, though perhaps a published date might be helpful if I am
returning to your collection after having gone through it in the past.

However, when I was a new caller, it seemed so hard to collect dances with
particular figures, transitions, orientations, or whatever, so those kinds
of categories would have been more useful to me years ago and thus may be
useful to many others now.

Hope this info is helpful!

Dugan Murphy
Portland, Maine
dugan at duganmurphy.com
www.DuganMurphy.com
www.PortlandIntownContraDance.com
www.NufSed.consulting

...
  From: Luke Donforth &lt;luke.donev(a)gmail.com&gt;
 Subject: [Callers] Publishing dances on the web

 Hi Folks,

 I currently have a terrible system for publishing dances I've written on
 the web (blog-esque thing in wordpress; really hard to search through).
 There's been talk on and off of a big database of dances, but that doesn't
 seem to be happening so I thought I should do something for mine.

 I'm contemplating better ways of making dances my compositions more
 accessible; and since that would be for other people, I'm curious what's
 useful for other people.

 I'm envisioning four categories of dances; and then just lists of dances
 (title & sequence) on those pages. The categories I had in mind:
 Family dances
 Glossary contras
 Unique contras
 Odd formations

 Are there separate things you'd want to see in a list of dances when you're
 going through? Beckets, Closing dances, bouncy/smooth, etc.

 I've gotten really attached to Callers Companion (
 http://callerscompanion.com/), and really like how it lets searches happen
 on dances. Anyone have a good way to incorporate that, or the type of
 element checklist/flag it provides, into a web-based interface for dances?

 It might also be that most folks don't collect dances from websites; and
 this is wasted time. But it does seem like I've obfuscated finding my
 compositions, and I regret not making them more available.

 Thoughts, opinions, experience, and advice appreciated.

 Thanks!

 --
 Luke Donforth
 Luke.Donforth(a)gmail.com