Keith - Why didn't we tell the guy to listen to the caller? Who knew that was the problem? We didn't, until he said that, rather late, after we had given up on doing contra dances.
What he said before that was "I don't know where to go." So, of course, we told him where to go. We didn't pick up on the fact that it was the _listening_ that was the problem, not the information we gave. I think he was probably suffering from information overload from the moment he walked in (or even before he got there), which suggests that he was paying attention to too many things, and couldn't single out just the one thing. The Calling Party atmosphere, which is great for a new dancer who just needs some personal attention, was probably the very worst thing for him - all those "helpful" people probably made it worse. What did help was doing dead simple dances. So we did that - five of St Louis' finest, dancing a couple of ONS dances - we did the right thing (he was a nice guy, and we wanted him to feel welcome), but the party broke up early. M E On Wed, Mar 23, 2011 at 1:20 AM, Keith Tuxhorn <keith...@gmail.com> wrote: > > surprising things. The guy at the calling party didn't understand until the > end that the caller is telling you what to do--why didn't he? He probably > observed everyone else moving along to what a caller said, and the same > words were said when he got individual instruction--but nothing sank in. No > offense, Martha, but did anyone simply tell him to listen to the caller? > Some part of his hearing, or learning process, was simply shut down until > the end of the dance. Who knows why? Fear? Embarrassment? Literally being > "out of his mind" and not allowing himself to focus on the real world? > >
