Hi Mary. We're in Central Arkansas. Rob - - - - - - - - - - - - Robert Matson Cell: (917) 626-2675 On Wed, Jan 31, 2024 at 10:41 AM Mary Collins <nativedae(a)gmail.com> wrote:

Congrats Rob and co-organizers! Your optimism and positive outlook come through clearly. A cheerful post to read on a grey morning in Maine. :) Chrissy Fowler Belfast ME ________________________________ From: Robert Matson via Organizers <organizers(a)lists.sharedweight.net> Sent: Wednesday, January 31, 2024 12:40 AM To: organizers shared weight <organizers(a)lists.sharedweight.net>et>; Caller's discussion list <callers(a)sharedweight.net> Subject: [Organizers] New College Contra / 1st time with 50+ dancers! Hi All, Please join us in celebrating a significant milestone for our college dance: more than 50 dancers this past Friday! Last school year we averaged around 20/dance. Last year's core dancers were seniors. This school year we have been averaging around 10/dance, but our core dancers are mostly freshman. (Yay!) Video clip from the dance: Dance: 'The Flircle." Ellen Hostetter calling. Band: Bobby Fjsh and the Magic River https://youtu.be/TGWzuIk2LTE (For videos, we've promised to obscure dancers' features in order to maintain privacy.) As some of you know, who have met us on-line or in-person, we started our dance from scratch, with all first-time dancers and a novice caller who hadn't done much contra. (That said, our novice caller is a professional educator and researcher whose formative art was ballet and tap). At last Friday's dance, about 80% were first-timers. The other 20% were beginner-level. To share, with the hope that some of you can benefit, we've identified several possible explanations for the high turnout. The primary new effort was that we hosted a pop-up art exhibit in the space, lasting for the 120-minutes for which we had the studio. Long story short, pursuant to our floating the idea in our regular announcement and inviting artists to pin-up, one of our core dancers volunteered to curate a show and spoke with her art professor who, in turn, liked the idea and gave the students credit if they participated. From that, a good 25-30 student artists came with work to pin-up -- or put down -- we had one sculpture -- who had never heard of contra, who may have never put a foot down on a beat, and had no intent of dancing. With encouragement, all but one (due to health issues) joined in for the whole dance. The student who curated has offered to continue creating exhibits and we plan to do this every time. (We dance 2x/month.) We think it was a rogue wave of sorts. Another student, it so happened, on the same eve, got a group of his friends to come, and several students from the outdoors club showed up. And then several of our usual dancers, who we hadn't seen for a while, showed up. And then one of our usual dancers was freaked out by the size of the crowd, she told us, and left. :-) Luckily, a reporter and photographer from the school newspaper also visited on the same eve! So, a wonderful tsunami of first timers. We look forward to seeing how many keep returning. Program: Circassian Circle The Flircle - Intermission, art show, hob-nobbing - Swing workshop Lucky 7 Mixer We did three walkthroughs of each dance and started 10 min. late due to distractions caused by hanging the art show. We dance Larks/Robins. All best, Rob - - - - - - - - - - - Robert Matson Cell: (917) 626-2675