I think this sounds like a great idea, Emily! The only thing I'd think about is the community talent night being focused on beginners. I find that experienced contra callers and bands are often better for beginners because callers who've been doing this for a while are usually good at seeing when the call needs to be supporting new dancers, etc. Similarly, experienced bands I often find it easier to find the count of the music- sometimes when I'm hearing musicians who are not used to playing for contra, it can be difficult to find the 1 in their phrasing... In Toronto, for a year we did a monthly "free" dance for new callers to practice. The dancers were virtually all experienced, so they could give feedback to the new callers as they practiced... I do wonder if we should have had a few more fairly new dancers at those dances, since experienced dancers can deal with wobbles in the call... :) Best, Simon Toronto Contra Dance On Sat, Apr 21, 2018 at 1:27 PM, Jane Ewing via Organizers < organizers(a)lists.sharedweight.net&gt; wrote: