On 2/9/2014 10:16 AM, Danielle Boudreau wrote:
My name is Danielle, and I am a new caller in New Mexico. I just called my
first full evening last night. We ended up having a rather large group of
beginners, so much so that I could use neither my planned program nor even
my backup program that I thought would be appropriate for a mixed crowd. I
ended up programming on the fly, which didn't go as smoothly as I would
have liked.
I'd love to hear what other callers do in this situation, or how they are
able to avoid it with prep work beforehand.
Thanks!
Danielle
Hi Danielle,
Congratulations on calling your first evening! Welcome to the world of
juggling lots of things at once with everyone watching.
I always try to remember that the evening is a party of friends, with
music by our friends and everyone trying to have a good time. My role as
a caller is to help and lead folks in this good time. And also I try to
remember that the evening is not a classroom course with a syllabus or
even a backup syllabus. Sometimes the work of developing a program leads
to becoming invested in that program -- or even in the use of any
program -- which reduces our abilities to think outside-the-box and
adapt on-the-fly. So I always have a few alternative fun dances that
work for easy occasions -- circle dances, scatter mixers, old-time line
dances, a square or two, a grand march, etc. And while I am calling one
of those dances, I watch the crowd carefully and decide on the next one
or two dances. Sometimes this process may go through most of an evening.
But the end result is for people to have a good time.
Woody
