[Callers] "Flash Mob" dances

[Claire Takemori via Callers]

Alan,

I went to the demo contra last year.  I had only been doing contra for a year and found it a little intimidating to ask strangers out of the crowd to join us. 
For me, it would've been great to add in the FB announcement a little blurb about having experienced dancers ask the crowd to join before each dance.  That way those of us who might be intimidated by that can prepare a little mentally for the task.....  I love the ideas Linda wrote for an initial crowd gathering technique.  

I'd also really LOVE to do a REAL flash mob contra sometime, and maybe we can get someone to do a nice video for BACDS. Could be a fabulous promo. 
It would be cool to start with a violin and 2 couples , then have folks/musicians dribble in by 1s or 2s.  Obviously everyone knows the first dance by heart already.   Then the caller comes at the end to start a new dance!  

Thanks for doing that again Alan!   Looks like a great time. 

Claire Takemori 





Message: 1
Date: Sun, 26 Jul 2015 20:52:13 -0700
From: Alan Winston via Callers <callers at lists.sharedweight.net>
To: <callers at lists.sharedweight.net>
Subject: [Callers] "Flash Mob" dances
Message-ID: <55B5AAED.4020808 at slac.stanford.edu>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"; format=flowed

Over in San Jose we've just done a  second annual not-really-flash-mob 
dance.  Symphony Silicon Valley does a free public series of Pops 
concerts, get permission from them, pick one, get a bunch of volunteer 
dancers and a pickup band, print up some flyers and put up a sign with 
the sponsoring organization logo and URL, We put up a sign with the name 
of the organization, set up in the path of foot traffic to the concert 
spot, and do an hour and a half (or so) of easy contra dances, 
encouraging passersby to join in and hooking them up with 
more-experienced partners.

This is successful in terms of getting some exposure, and today we got 
somewhere between a half-dozen and a dozen new people to actually try 
it, and probably moved 25 flyers.  Nobody got hurt, some of the dancers 
stayed for several dances, etc.  We flushed out some old square dancers 
(who of course wanted to swing once around and wait for the next call) 
and some previous non-dancers of various ages.

(I was calling.  First round was missing many volunteer dancers and had 
multiple newbies, so I did a one-night-stand dance ("Up the Sides and 
Down the Middle") rather than a duple-minor contra; then Cranky 
Ingenuity, Inflation Reel, Kitchen Stomp, and Delphiniums and Daisies.)

Posting to ask if people who've done this kind of thing have any tips or 
tricks to get things going.

As caller I relied on my volunteer dancers to do the recruiting, and 
people had different comfort and skill levels doing that.  Is there 
something I can tell them that will increase their comfort in talking to 
strangers?

Thanks!

-- Alan
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