23 May
2016
23 May
'16
6:04 p.m.
Hello, all,
After losing monthly open-calling evenings to venue schedule conflicts last
year, the local contra group where I live (Louisville, KY) are
re-implementing them on 5th-week dances (so, about four or so times a
year). I am "organizing caller" for the first of these, next Monday, and
I'm wondering if any of y'all have advice on coordinating an evening of
open-calling.
The extent of organization for our previous open-calling dances had been,
essentially, callers put their name on a list and everyone hopes it works
out, and, while this was usually serendipitous fun, it often led to
long-running dances (both individually and for the evening overall) and
less-than-enjoyable experiences for newer dancers. When our board was
discussing re-starting open calling, I had recently been at the Jan Jam
(Champaign/Urbana, IL) after party, where Lauren Peckman had coordinated
open calling, and where I'd had the best open-calling experience—as both a
dancer and a caller—I'd ever encountered. I suggested to our board that,
this time around, the evenings each have an "organizing caller" to help
ensure overall program flow, coordinate callers/dances with an eye to
complexity/energy/time, incorporate and assist novice callers, wrangle
callers if need be for time limits, fill in gaps in the program, have
back-pocket dances at the ready, etc.
Lo, they asked me to take a go at coordinating. Suggest a change, be the
change, I suppose. ^_^
The open calling has been announced at our weekly dances leading up, and
tonight (a week before) I'll be asking (but not requiring) prospective
callers to talk to me to help me get an idea for how I can best help the
evening flow.
Any suggestions/anecdotes/warnings from my more-experienced fellows would
be greatly appreciated.
— Chet Gray
23 May
23 May
6:49 p.m.
I would depend on whether this were for experienced callers or new
callers trying it out for the first (or second...) time.
With experienced callers you can ask them to call an easy introductory
dance at the beginning, an energetic dance midterm, or a slower dance
for a wind down at the end. With the newest callers, that seldom
works, as they just want to call a dance that they though as fun when
they danced it. They seldom have any idea how to chose a dance for the
crowd, or for the time during the evening.
Beginners will need a coach to help them pick a dance to call, and
then prompts to assure that the walk through and calling is
successful, and that they end the dance in a reasonable time, too.
Cary Ravits Notes on Calling Contra Dances, can be a very good source
for beginning callers: http://www.dance.ravitz.us/call.php#n
On Mon, May 23, 2016 at 2:04 PM, Chet Gray via Callers
<callers(a)lists.sharedweight.net> wrote:
Hello, all,
After losing monthly open-calling evenings to venue schedule conflicts last
year, the local contra group where I live (Louisville, KY) are
re-implementing them on 5th-week dances (so, about four or so times a year).
I am "organizing caller" for the first of these, next Monday, and I'm
wondering if any of y'all have advice on coordinating an evening of
open-calling.
The extent of organization for our previous open-calling dances had been,
essentially, callers put their name on a list and everyone hopes it works
out, and, while this was usually serendipitous fun, it often led to
long-running dances (both individually and for the evening overall) and
less-than-enjoyable experiences for newer dancers. When our board was
discussing re-starting open calling, I had recently been at the Jan Jam
(Champaign/Urbana, IL) after party, where Lauren Peckman had coordinated
open calling, and where I'd had the best open-calling experience—as both a
dancer and a caller—I'd ever encountered. I suggested to our board that,
this time around, the evenings each have an "organizing caller" to help
ensure overall program flow, coordinate callers/dances with an eye to
complexity/energy/time, incorporate and assist novice callers, wrangle
callers if need be for time limits, fill in gaps in the program, have
back-pocket dances at the ready, etc.
Lo, they asked me to take a go at coordinating. Suggest a change, be the
change, I suppose. ^_^
The open calling has been announced at our weekly dances leading up, and
tonight (a week before) I'll be asking (but not requiring) prospective
callers to talk to me to help me get an idea for how I can best help the
evening flow.
Any suggestions/anecdotes/warnings from my more-experienced fellows would be
greatly appreciated.
— Chet Gray
_______________________________________________
Callers mailing list
Callers(a)lists.sharedweight.net
http://lists.sharedweight.net/listinfo.cgi/callers-sharedweight.net
7:31 p.m.
Hi,
Sue Rosen generally does this for the periodic NEFFA caller nights at the
Scout House Thursday dance. The expectation there is you have your wall
clock time slots (e.g.: 7:30-7:55) and you *end* your slot on time, no
matter what happened before or during your slot. Having slots specified as
real clock time instead of elapsed time makes staying on/recovering to
schedule much easier. I appreciate/leverage her approach and have taken it
a bit more on-line.
I've done this several times for our other Scout House series. My approach
is to set up a shared Google spreadsheet with the available time slots,
names assigned to slots. Generally in the first "half" (curiously, longer
than the second :), a given caller gets two dance slots in a row and one in
the second (one caller gets the flip assignment). I have the four callers
enter two dances for each slot. One choice for "beginner heavy" and the
other for "more experienced". Having them all in one place, we can
visualize the program choices and challenge arc of the selections. The
crowd that arrives leads us to which column will be the program that night.
People can comment in the sheet and we work out most conflicts or necessary
adjustments on-line (or by phone, etc.) before the evening. Of course there
may be some tweaks that night, but having the two program difficulty
choices spelled out minimizes that.
This process typically takes about 2 weeks. Can be done in less time but
would need to be led strongly with deadlines. People (particularly at this
level) have focus on their "primary" job/life and the turnaround time on
requests and changes can take days.
Other thoughts:
- Work out who'll introduce/recognize the band, sound, etc. (easily
overdone or forgot otherwise).
- Outgoing caller introduce the next one.
- Tape a copy of the program up near the caller's mic.
- Following caller helps enforce (gently) finishing clock time of
previous caller.
- Have slop slots built into your schedule (~7 minutes first half, ~5
second - not distributed into the caller slots and ideally remaining
unused) and explicitly schedule any waltz/scandi and break(s) too.
- You're the glue in this process. Be ready to help out but also stay
back to let them work out any issues themselves - that's part of their
learning too!
Good luck!
-Don
On Mon, May 23, 2016 at 2:04 PM, Chet Gray via Callers <
callers(a)lists.sharedweight.net> wrote:
Hello, all,
After losing monthly open-calling evenings to venue schedule conflicts
last year, the local contra group where I live (Louisville, KY) are
re-implementing them on 5th-week dances (so, about four or so times a
year). I am "organizing caller" for the first of these, next Monday, and
I'm wondering if any of y'all have advice on coordinating an evening of
open-calling.
The extent of organization for our previous open-calling dances had been,
essentially, callers put their name on a list and everyone hopes it works
out, and, while this was usually serendipitous fun, it often led to
long-running dances (both individually and for the evening overall) and
less-than-enjoyable experiences for newer dancers. When our board was
discussing re-starting open calling, I had recently been at the Jan Jam
(Champaign/Urbana, IL) after party, where Lauren Peckman had coordinated
open calling, and where I'd had the best open-calling experience—as both a
dancer and a caller—I'd ever encountered. I suggested to our board that,
this time around, the evenings each have an "organizing caller" to help
ensure overall program flow, coordinate callers/dances with an eye to
complexity/energy/time, incorporate and assist novice callers, wrangle
callers if need be for time limits, fill in gaps in the program, have
back-pocket dances at the ready, etc.
Lo, they asked me to take a go at coordinating. Suggest a change, be the
change, I suppose. ^_^
The open calling has been announced at our weekly dances leading up, and
tonight (a week before) I'll be asking (but not requiring) prospective
callers to talk to me to help me get an idea for how I can best help the
evening flow.
Any suggestions/anecdotes/warnings from my more-experienced fellows would
be greatly appreciated.
— Chet Gray
_______________________________________________
Callers mailing list
Callers(a)lists.sharedweight.net
http://lists.sharedweight.net/listinfo.cgi/callers-sharedweight.net
24 May
24 May
10:53 p.m.
Hi Chet,
Here in Saint Louis we have a monthly dance called "Callers' Choice" We
use it as an opportunity to try new dances (either new to the caller or
newly written); to let new callers "get their feet wet" by calling to real
dancers in a friendly environment (After a while calling a dance to salt
and pepper shakers loses its charm); and to just mess around in general.
Almost always we have someone coordinating the evening (every now an then
no one volunteers and we wing it -- with mixed results.) People who want
to call send their dances to the coordinator usually by Wednesday before
the Saturday dance) and the coordinator tries to organize a coherent
program using these dances. This is also good practice for new callers who
need to learn to think about the entire evening rather than thinking about
single dances.
This has worked very well for us over the years, and we often hear from
dancers that Callers's Choice is "the most fun of any of the dances."
That's probably because the dancers feel invested in making things work
--- particularly with new callers -- and we can all laugh together at the
occasional mishaps.
Speaking of mishaps I had one recently where I was scheduled to call two
dances. The one I tried in the first half didn't work at all, so I ditched
it and went with Plan B (the other dance). Then in the second half I got
up and said -- "I figured out what was wrong and we're going to try again."
The response from crowd was amazingly positive (and the dance worked)
Dale
BTW although we normally pay our callers for Saint Louis dances, we don't
pay the callers at Callers' Choice. We do pay the band (mostly.)
On Mon, May 23, 2016 at 1:04 PM, Chet Gray via Callers <
callers(a)lists.sharedweight.net> wrote:
Hello, all,
After losing monthly open-calling evenings to venue schedule conflicts
last year, the local contra group where I live (Louisville, KY) are
re-implementing them on 5th-week dances (so, about four or so times a
year). I am "organizing caller" for the first of these, next Monday, and
I'm wondering if any of y'all have advice on coordinating an evening of
open-calling.
The extent of organization for our previous open-calling dances had been,
essentially, callers put their name on a list and everyone hopes it works
out, and, while this was usually serendipitous fun, it often led to
long-running dances (both individually and for the evening overall) and
less-than-enjoyable experiences for newer dancers. When our board was
discussing re-starting open calling, I had recently been at the Jan Jam
(Champaign/Urbana, IL) after party, where Lauren Peckman had coordinated
open calling, and where I'd had the best open-calling experience—as both a
dancer and a caller—I'd ever encountered. I suggested to our board that,
this time around, the evenings each have an "organizing caller" to help
ensure overall program flow, coordinate callers/dances with an eye to
complexity/energy/time, incorporate and assist novice callers, wrangle
callers if need be for time limits, fill in gaps in the program, have
back-pocket dances at the ready, etc.
Lo, they asked me to take a go at coordinating. Suggest a change, be the
change, I suppose. ^_^
The open calling has been announced at our weekly dances leading up, and
tonight (a week before) I'll be asking (but not requiring) prospective
callers to talk to me to help me get an idea for how I can best help the
evening flow.
Any suggestions/anecdotes/warnings from my more-experienced fellows would
be greatly appreciated.
— Chet Gray
_______________________________________________
Callers mailing list
Callers(a)lists.sharedweight.net
http://lists.sharedweight.net/listinfo.cgi/callers-sharedweight.net
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3 comments
4 participants
participants (4)
-
Chet Gray via Callers -
Dale Wilson via Callers
-
Don Veino via Callers
-
Richard Hart via Callers