[Callers] Public Dance, Ideas Wanted

[Winston, Alan P.]

Around where I am, anyway, parents of teeny children have little sense 
and assume everything is perfectly fine for their little children to 
participate.  (I mean, like, they'll send in their 4 year olds while 
staying back on the sidelines and watching, sometimes with a baby in a 
stroller.)  So then you either have to bar the kids who can't manage 
from dancing [and you don't want to do that - downer for everybody] or 
do stuff they can manage or at least isn't actively unsafe.  Also, you 
want to do as little instruction as possible.  When you're at a 
multi-ring-circus event and you want to catch people who are just 
passing by, you want them to be able to jump on right now.  A bunch of 
people standing around while some guy talks reads like "nothing's 
happening here!"  Or, you get halfway through teaching something and 
some people will wander in and join the set and you have to either just 
carry on and hope they pick it up (they won't, not right away) or try 
everybody's patience by going back to the beginning, and some of the 
people who are lined up will get bored and wander off ....

If you think the crowd needs a break between country dances, have the 
band (or recorded music) play a waltz or polka so it'll still seem like 
something's happening for the people who stick their heads in during 
that five minutes.

(If you have a lot - like 70% of the people on the floor of experienced 
contra dancers who are acting as dance hosts and breaking up newbie 
couples, great, you can probably do Sicilian Circles with either pass 
thru or promenade progression, but even a ladies' chain is really 
difficult if half the people haven't done it, and you don't want to 
spend your attention credits on teaching that and doing multiple 
walkthroughs.  Without a huge percentage of support from ringer dancers, 
you shouldn't consider even the easiest of regular contras in this 
situation.   )

One thing that works well for me is to get the music going and take 
somebody's left hand in my right (so we're both facing the same 
direction) and start traveling encouraging people to join on, so we 
eventually get a snake going.  You can wander around, you can wind up 
the ball of twine, you can thread the needle, without saying a word.  I 
like to wander around for a while, starting on A music, and on some B 
music (maybe several iterations of the tune later) draw the line into a 
circle, circle left and right, into the center and back, repeat, and 
then break off and do something different.  [Last year it occurred to 
me, finally, that once you're in the circle and you have somebody's 
right hand in your left, you can drop your right hand and now you're on 
the other end of your long line, and you can lead the same figures and 
they'll feel new and different.  Adjust your step size, etc, so any 
teeny kids in the line don't get yanked too hard.

I'd also recommend this snowball scatter mixer, which can be done with 
few words.  Start the music, caller (and possibly a confederate, but 
also possibly an alert-looking youngster, any gender presentation ok)  
right elbow turn  (8 bars - it'll take them time to get organized to do 
it at the start) left elbow turn (8 bars), crossed-hand turn (8 bars);  
pattycake (clap own together, right hand, own together, left hand, own 
together, both, and turn your back on this person and look for a new 
person to start right elbow turn with.)  Lost and found is in the 
middle. Parents with their own little kids can just not mix and it's fine.

Assess the people on the floor at all times and give them more challenge 
if they can handle it, but the audio situation won't be great, there 
will be people who surprise you by not understanding spoken English, and 
it is way more important that people feel successful and had a good time 
dancing than that they get a taste of contra dancing.

tl,dr; Get people dancing, spend no time "teaching", do stuff that works 
with these constraints.  You can earn some talk time by giving them some 
instant fun, but a constant flow of newcomers means you need to keep 
re-earning that.

-- Alan