I, too, am paying more attention at dances. I notice what I like and
don't like about particular dances. I bought a cheap digital voice
recorder to keep in my pocket (I sweat too much to keep paper in my
pocket). If I like the dance I dictate the dance into the recorder
before the next dance starts (along with who called it what night and
what they said about the name/author).
I find that I'm only taking mental notes about wording/teaching, etc.
with callers that I enjoy instead of critiquing callers that I don't.
I have been doing some work on figuring out how I am going to organize
my dances. Being a geek working in a digital environment, I am working
on a system where my dances are formatted on my computer and I print
them on colored card stock and cut them to index card size. (The data
has a backup!) 8^) I plan on using the colored card system that Bob
Issacs (and Nathaniel Jack) use. Bob sent me a basic library of 50
dances that he uses as part of the callers workshop that he teaches and
that I plan on using as the seed of my collection.
A friend has helped organize a new callers dance on December 4th from
2-5pm in Arlington (Park Ave. Church). Seth, Nathaniel and I are each
doing 1/3 of the program. I have been doing some thinking about my
program (I'm calling the first 4 dances) and the feeling that I am going
to try for, but haven't picked out the dances yet. I will probably do
that once I have my dances organized on cards. I have also talked to
another caller about doing an entire evening at another dance. I'm also
going to try and get to the Milford, NH dance this month. A (different)
friend told me that the organizer might be open to allowing a new caller
to call half or all of an evening and I want to go there and see what
it's like and meet him.
Once I have some calling experiences to share, I will definitely share
them with the list!
Chris
Seth Seeger wrote:
A couple things have happened to my dancing:
I now pay more attention to the dances themselves and what in
particular I may not like about a dance. I'm also listening very
closely to the caller's walk through, looking for things I would have
done differently or nice ways of explaining something that I may want
to remember.
During a dance however, I'm still able to get into my "zone" where I'm
not thinking about the dance - just letting my body move with the
music. If it's a dance that I want to write down, I have to really
work at coming out of that zone so I can remember the dance. (If I
just let my muscle memory handle it, I have a hard time recalling the
details afterwards.)
Writing down dances is an interesting task: If it's a dance I like,
I'll repeat the moves to myself as I'm dancing it. In hopes that will
help me write it down afterwards. (I've been carrying pen and paper
in my pocket.) I usually have trouble remembering the name and
author. I've emailed the callers afterwards asking for clarifications
on ones I'm not sure about.
As for calling, I've got a gig on Nov 20th in East Sandwich. I've
very excited (and nervous) about it. I'm going down to East Sandwich
this weekend to see what the dancing is like and to get a feel for the
dancers.
I also tried calling a square to a small group of friends recently -
it was MUCH harder than I thought it would be. The hardest parts were
keeping up with the music, remembering when to come in after a swing,
and the transition between the square and the break. (I hadn't
practiced to the music that I ended up using.)
I'm going to try to go to the Nelson NH dance every now and then (it's
an open mic), but it's 1.5 hours away.
Seth
On Oct 11, 2004, at 12:05 PM, Lisa Greenleaf wrote:
So you took Tom's class at Pinewoods, and now you're asking questions
and
going to dances with a different eye and ear. Have you been
calling? Got
any stories you want to share? What did you learn? What delighted you?
What surprised you? Keep us posted!
Lisa
