[Callers] What can you do.....?

K Panton kenwp1 at gmail.com
Sun Sep 29 16:41:00 PDT 2019 

I think that whole "momentum" topic is very useful and, in my experience,
aside from the occasional reference in a walk-through it is typically left
for the dancer to connect the dots on their own.

It goes hand in hand with awareness of transitions (i.e. the connecting
tissue, that we don't often teach, between the figures, that we do teach),
I think. (I sometimes think - not really - I'm the only one who can enjoy a
lovely transition as much as a lovely figure)

Not sure how one can incorporate yet another teaching point into a beginner
session but I've often thought that a regular "tips" session of, perhaps,
10 minutes during the break - for those interested - would be a good time
for such things in a community's dance schedule.

I'd be curious to hear what other communities do by way of well-received
teachable moments (apart from quick, targetted style points from the caller
during the walk-through).

Ken Panton

On Sun., Sep. 29, 2019, 18:02 , <callers-request at lists.sharedweight.net>
wrote:

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>    1. What can you do.....? (tom hinds)
>    2. Re: What can you do.....? (Winston, Alan P.)
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> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
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> Message: 1
> Date: Sun, 29 Sep 2019 08:44:38 -0400
> From: tom hinds <tomthecaller at yahoo.com>
> To: callers at lists.sharedweight.net
> Subject: [Callers] What can you do.....?
> Message-ID: <8757E3F3-E880-4101-9CF8-5A05A244699B at yahoo.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain;       charset=utf-8
>
> Alan,
>
> You raise an interesting question.  After I?ve had time to sleep on it,
> I?ve come up with some other issues to raise and.discuss.
>
> I?m curious if you have a beginning workshop before the dance.
>
> In my opinion the skills needed for a new dancer to not only survive their
> first dance but to actually enjoy it are many   And that means having a
> beginning session that approximates as close as possible the dance itself.
>
> In your email you mention larks and ravens.  If you do have a beginning
> workshop, are the newbies given the opportunity to practice/react to their
> new titles?   Not having that opportunity to practice reacting to their new
> titles may cause a bit of confusion on the dance floor.
>
> Tom
>
>
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 2
> Date: Sun, 29 Sep 2019 19:37:06 +0000
> From: "Winston, Alan P." <winston at slac.stanford.edu>
> To: "callers at lists.sharedweight.net" <callers at lists.sharedweight.net>,
>         tom hinds <tomthecaller at yahoo.com>
> Subject: Re: [Callers] What can you do.....?
> Message-ID:
>         <
> DM5PR07MB403868A0F8945FE5D7B411F7F2830 at DM5PR07MB4038.namprd07.prod.outlook.com
> >
>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="windows-1252"
>
> Tom --
>
> It's possible, if not likely, that what I'm calling "seems to have no
> sense of flow" has different causes for different people at different
> times.  I've definitely seen it happening at gents/ladies dances as well as
> at larks/robins dances as well as at English dances.  When I lead a
> beginner session at a larks/robins dance I introduce role names when
> teaching the swing, emphasize that larks open on the left, ravens/robins on
> the right, and do a circle mixer that's just into the center and back,
> swing the next etc, repeating the larks left robins right thing.  So they
> get to hear the role name a lot.
>
> Of course new comers often take quite a while to get sorted regardless.
> Last Sunday I called a single contra dance at a party - the party honored a
> queer activist who also liked contra dancing, so the honoree wanted there
> to be a dance, although hardly anybody at the party had done it before.
> Did a Haste-to-the-Wedding variant which only had a partner swing, felt no
> need to use any role names at all (beyond partner and neighbor)  and every
> foursome one couple was in spent about 6 of the 8 beats available to do a
> right hand star getting the star organized.  I couldn't see what was going
> on, but they'd pass through and circle on time, and then their foursome
> would be huddled like the Peanuts kids around the sad little tree in the
> Christmas special and then a star would start moving.
>
> (This isn't an example of a "no sense of flow" problem, and I didn't see
> any of that at that event.)
>
> What I'm talking about here is that there's choreography that seems fairly
> inevitable - if you're going to circle left into a half-poussette isn't the
> probable direction of the half-poussette pretty obvious, or if you did a
> clockwise half poussette into a mad robin why should you even have to use a
> role name to say who goes through the middle first?  Getting it wrong
> requires fighting your momentum - and some people will do that.  [Although
> if they're generally tentative, or late, or executing one call and stopping
> and then executing the next call, then they don't have appropriate momentum
> anyway.]
>
> -- Alan
>
>
> ________________________________
> From: Callers <callers-bounces at lists.sharedweight.net> on behalf of tom
> hinds via Callers <callers at lists.sharedweight.net>
> Sent: Sunday, September 29, 2019 5:44 AM
> To: callers at lists.sharedweight.net <callers at lists.sharedweight.net>
> Subject: [Callers] What can you do.....?
>
> Alan,
>
> You raise an interesting question.  After I?ve had time to sleep on it,
> I?ve come up with some other issues to raise and.discuss.
>
> I?m curious if you have a beginning workshop before the dance.
>
> In my opinion the skills needed for a new dancer to not only survive their
> first dance but to actually enjoy it are many   And that means having a
> beginning session that approximates as close as possible the dance itself.
>
> In your email you mention larks and ravens.  If you do have a beginning
> workshop, are the newbies given the opportunity to practice/react to their
> new titles?   Not having that opportunity to practice reacting to their new
> titles may cause a bit of confusion on the dance floor.
>
> Tom
>
>
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