I started doing this for the Chicago Barn Dance Company, for a few months. Historically, I have been just writing it down at the dance, or asking the caller after the dance or by a followup email. So to date it has been more of a personal project to help my calling. We discussed this at the last dance, and several callers and dancers were interested in trying to make this part of our group so we will be discussing this how we might do this as as community. It was initially helpful to me as I began calling more often to see others programs, and as a board member for: - Knowing the number of dances we are averaging per night (we want to encourage local callers to work on teaching well and calling for appropriate time) - Know the dance figures that are being called (to determine if there are new figures we can work on for improving dance skills and experience) - Know if a dance was called the week prior (for callers planning when calling the following week) - To consider how much our program difficulty level varies by attendance (we keep a new dancer sign-in sheet) I am attaching a copy of what I have been using as an initial tool…I would be interested in seeing what others are doing as well. Thanks ! Cheryl Cheryl Joyal clmjoyal(a)aol.com clmjoyal(a)gmail.com 630-667-3284 (cell) On Mar 6, 2018, at 7:41 PM, Kalia Kliban via Callers <callers(a)lists.sharedweight.net> wrote: Dance logs, a cumulative record for a series of which dances have been called on any given evening, are very common in the English dance community but vanishingly rare in the contra community. Why is that? They're really helpful for incoming callers, and it's probably nice for the dancers not to keep getting the same dances week after week. I've only ever known of one contra series that kept a log, and it's probably because I suggested it when they started out (the Queer Contra series in Oakland, CA). Are there any contra organizers out there who maintain a dance log? Those of you who do, how do you get the dance lists from the callers? The Oakland series had a little book on the stage and the callers would write their programs down as they went or at the end of the night. Part of it comes down to record-keeping on the part of the callers. I keep a personal log of all the dances I've called so I can avoid repeating myself when I return to a given venue. That makes it easy for me to produce a set list after the fact if an organizer wants to fill in a gap in the log. Fellow contra callers, do you all keep records of what you call, and if you don't, how do you avoid repeating yourself or remember what worked well (or not) the last time you called at a particular place? If you work with something like Caller's Companion, do you update the program list with what you actually danced as opposed to what you programmed? Just curious about other people's process on this. Kalia in Sebastopol, CA _______________________________________________ List Name: Callers mailing list List Address: Callers(a)lists.sharedweight.net Archives: https://www.mail-archive.com/callers@lists.sharedweight.net/

On Tue, 6 Mar 2018 17:41:55 -0800, Kalia Kliban via Callers wrote: I work with my Dance Organiser, and yes, I always update the list afterwards. I usually call a mix of Playford-style, English traditional, Contra, Square and the occasional Scottish, so I'm not a typical contra caller. Colin Hume Email colin(a)colinhume.com Web site http://colinhume.com

On Tue, Mar 6, 2018 at 5:41 PM, Kalia Kliban via Callers < callers(a)lists.sharedweight.net&gt; wrote: Another factor is that English dances usually specify the tune that goes with them. Contra dances very rarely do. So if a dance series has a house band that plays most of the time, as some of the Bay Area English dances do, then a repeated English dance may be the same figures done to the same tune played by the same musicians. For a contra, even if the same band played the same set of tunes, it's typical to change tunes partway through the dance, anyway, so it's hard to achieve the same degree of repetition. Of course, repetition isn't always looked down upon. I've heard that the weekly dance in Nelson, NH always has Chorus Jig on the program, and other dances that repeat week to week. Some contra dancers do appreciate recognizing dances - ah, Poetry in Motion, I know how that one goes. As Mac says, the type of repetition that contra dancers really notice is within an evening - when four dances in a row have heys, or half of the dances have Petronella turns, and all start to feel the same... and that's a type of repetition that's less likely to appear in ECD, where dances that have similar figures could easily be done to different tempos or meters. Personally, I keep track of all the dances that I've actually called, because I don't want to call the same dances all the time; most of the time it's slightly different from what I programmed originally. I add notes to myself if something didn't go well. I can't remember if I've been asked by organizers for my program, but it may have happened once or twice. Hope this helps! Yoyo Zhou