Re: [Callers] Calling at Free Folk Festival

Clare, I've called at the SF Free Folk Festival before. As Nick says, you can expect to see a fair number of experienced contra dancers there. This was true even last year, when SFFFF was also a one-day event with the evening contra opposite the Palo Alto contra, and I think the San Rafael contra as well. I wouldn't worry about losing a ton of contra dancers to the blues/fusion dance. While some contra dancers have eclectic tastes, quite a few stick to contras only. Of course, you can also expect to have a much higher proportion of total newbies and very occasional (and "rusty") contra dancers than typical at a regular contra series. You should be quite able to call simple duple minor contras, not "barn dance" repertoire. And I'd expect to have quite a few people there (a significant minority if not a majority) who do know the difference. You wrote: Those are all good ideas in this situation. Another point to note is whether any move that could be tricky for complete newbies (e.g., roll away with a half sashay, or the courtesy turn in a "right and left through") is done with a series of different neighbors or with the same partner each time. If it's done with partners, a pair of new dancers dancing together could repeatedly end up in the wrong place or facing the wrong direction. To keep the significant contingent of experienced dancers from getting ticked off you'll need to include partner swings in most, if not all, contras. If a couple persistently ends with the "lady" on the left, you'd like the dance to be such that an easy recovery follows, or at least such that the pocket of disorganization stays small and doesn't spread up and down the set. Acoustics can definitely be a problem at SFFFF. I'd say to keep calls _long_ and clear: FACE aCROSS; LADies CHAIN instead of - - - CHAIN and GENTleMEN LEFT alleMANDE instead of - - MEN allemande LEFT and LONG LINES FORward GO instead of - - FORward and BACK Newbies typically have slower reaction time to the calls than experienced dancers have, and they also don't have as good a sense of when the phrase is coming around. And even if they've been told "better never than late," they may not appreciate how to put that into practice. Even with a four-beat call instead of a one- or two-beat call, you may occasionally see a couple continue to swing a whole time around *after* you deliver the last word of the call for the next action. Try to project your voice into the mic, enunciate clearly, and choose calls with not too many syllables per beat. You might ask one of the other callers, or some other person you trust, to listen at the back of the room while you teach and call and to check on whether your words can be heard clearly through the music and/or conversational buzz. You might even make this request of the sound tech, perhaps wording it as a request to check on *your* enunciation and mic technique. --Jim