Maia --
I read you as saying that you're running a contra dance series for
students at your school, students who don't go to outside dances. So
you've got a hall full of beginners and many of them keep coming back
(and other people show up], but they don't go to outside dances so they
don't learn anything you don't teach them.
What you're asking is how to hook them immediately and also how to build
their dance skills. They're in an environment where they can just turn
around and go back to the dorm if it isn't interesting. You're worried
about
turning them off of contra for the rest of their lives if you give them
stuff they think is trivial and dumb, but if it's too hard they'll bail
as well. You don't think they have patience for a lesson.
Is that right?
First thing: Whatever you're doing and however you do it, there are
people who won't like it and will bail. It's not personal, and it's not
a failure. You're giving people the chance to find out if they find
something is fun, different people like different things, and a lot of
the people who try it at all (especially under low-commitment conditions
like just checking it out because it's on campus and they're free,
rather than having to get into car or take a bus. It's like sticking
your nose into a store when you're at the mall already; if it doesn't do
anything for you, you just go on to the next one.
There's a guy who keeps trying - with some success - to spread contra
dancing to youth groups at Stanford. As I understand it, he uses
recorded music (not at all restricted to "contra dance" music), does
pretty much simple figures, is effectively gender-free without armbands
(that is, doesn't police crossing over in improper dances), and
deliberately doesn't run the dances very many times through, which means
that there are more opportunities to jump aboard - people don't come in
the door, see a dance going on and on, and turn around and walk out.
People aren't stuck with incompetent or skeevy partners for very long.
The recorded music means that it's not all alien sounding to
contemporary people who come through the door.
That said, if it were me, I'd run a series that was more like a barn
dance than a contemporary contra. The
all-longways-duple-improper-driving-music-trancey-dancing seems to me to
only successfully bring newcomers on-board because it's a going concern,
that is, because most of the people in the hall know what they're doing and
can help the newcomers get where they need to be until they learn by
osmosis (or never really learn, which does happen). I would pick up a
bunch of dances in different formations, with swings - probably mostly
from the English ceilidh tradition because there are a bunch of them
there and they're quick teaches - drop the ones that require ranting or
step-hops - always have something I can do no matter how many people are
in the hall, play high-energy cheerful music (contra-dance band tracks
more than ceilidh band tracks, with exceptions for the
not-so-thuddy-and-slow ceilidh bands like the Committee Band or Peeping
Tom), try to make sure that something was going on
pretty constantly (because people will look in the door while you're
having a two minute rest and decide it's dull),
keep playing recorded music during the breaks, and anything else you can
think of.
Call only dances you believe in. The biggest determining factor in
whether non-dancers think your dances are dumb is what you think about
them and how you present them. (That's not what you tell them in words,
but what your body language, tone of voice, etc, put forth. If you
model digging it, they're way likelier to dig it - if they can be
reached at all.) I personally believe fully in a bunch of pretty dumb
dances - Galopede, Cumberland Square, Circassian Circle mixer, Circle
Waltz mixer, La Bastringue. I even believe in Grand Marches (which are
just follow the leader, really). There's nothing wrong with dumb dances,
especially ones where you can fly all around. I don't personally
believe in Le Brandy, despite having enjoyed dancing it, so I don't
call that, and I suspect the butt-bumping looks pretty dorky to people
who aren't doing it.
If you want, you can do that, and also try to build somewhat in
complexity over the course of the evening or the course of the
semester. First-timers often drop away at the mid-dance break; if you
assess that the people left
understand phrasing, etc, move to longways contra then. Do a
mini-workshop after you've earned their attention by giving them fun
stuff to do and a sense of success.
[And that's me, and I don't swear it'll work for you.]
(I think there've been good suggestions about teaching the swing. I
sometimes do beginner workshops by getting people walking around the
room to show that it's smooth walking, not skipping, then start
allemanding everybody in sight and insisting on getting good weight on
the allemande. People who've had the feeling from allemanding can then
work with others who haven't had it yet, and pretty soon most of the
room can do a satisfying allemande. Once they have the satisfying
shared weight feeling, it's easier to point them into how to do a
walking or buzz step swing then if they start without having had the
feeling.)
Here's an article from people who've run on-campus dance series as
non-students. This isn't 100% relevant to your
circumstances - there's a lot about relating to students when you're not
one, dealing with management as outsiders, etc - but maybe something
will be helpful.
http://germantowncountrydancers.org/campus.html
And here's the country dance and song society starter kit for college
dances:
http://www.cdss.org/college-starter-kit.html
I see that the programming page has this quote, which it looks like
you're already on top of:
* Be aware of the needs and insecurities of your audience. Plan styles
and figures that are likely to seem cool and allow your audience to
get over their initial hang-ups about dancing.
/"At Brown, students were often embarrassed to do dances that had
"dorky" figures, whereas they took to easy smoothly-flowing dances
nicely. College students can be very self-conscious, and this can be
a barrier to them dancing in the first place. At Brown dances,
students who had never danced before would regularly cluster outside
the door, peeking in to decide if they wanted to join. They would
pay their money and walk through the door most often when what was
going on inside looked 'cool' to the average college
observer."*-*/*Julia Nickles, Brown alum*
I hope this is the kind of answer that you're looking for and is maybe
even of some help.
-- Alan
On 9/4/2012 8:45 AM, Maia McCormick wrote:
Hey folks,
My name is Maia, and I'm new to this listserv, though I've been lurking
around for a few weeks. I call college dances at my school in Western Mass,
and every now and then I do an area dance. I've got two questions for your
collective wisdom.
The first: I'm curious how you all put together programs when calling for a
group of complete beginners. What's generally the progression of moves that
you teach? Do you think dances with the most basic of moves (say, a dance
that's all circles, stars, and long lines, not even a partner swing) are
helpful in getting people oriented to dancing, or are trivial and boring
and will make people think contra is dumb? (People "thinking contra is
dumb" is actually a bit more of a concern for me calling college dances,
where most of the folks to turn out aren't necessarily of the 'contra
mindset' and so it's important to hold their interest and make them think
that what they're doing is exciting and worth their time--they're not
necessarily going to stick with it for the evening, or even for more than
one dance, if they're not immediately into it.)
The second, which ties into the first: how do you teach good contra
etiquette--*especially* how to swing properly--when you don't have
experienced people in the crowd to show the way? At my dances at school,
most of the swings are tensionless and/or an awkward sideways gallop; very
few of us go to outside dances, so the overall experience level seems to be
capped. Have you found an effective way to *teach* proper swinging, besides
throwing a beginner into a crowd of experienced dances so that they
eventually absorb it by osmosis? How can I get swings at my college dance
up to snuff?
Cheers,
Maia
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