I agree that the caller trying to teach too much verbally gets pointless
very quickly. There are definitely pointers that callers can give that will
help dancers a bunch, but they should be given quickly and succinctly,
and/or shown through demonstration ("try the allemande the angry,
competitive way! Now try a noodle-arm allemande. Okay, now try it a way
that feels better to both of you.") It's distressingly easy for a caller to
make him/herself tune-out-able.Along the lines of what Jonathan said, I'd be wary of even bringing up "beats" to dancers at all. A lot of dancers aren't necessarily even familiar with that terminology, or at least don't think of dancing in terms of beats/phrase length, so to make a passing mention to the number of beats something takes may be MORE confusing than not mentioning it all. Instead, I would go with something like "the circle left is faster than you think!" or "make sure you pass through in time to balance your next neighbor!" (and then be really precise with calling the balance so it lines up directly with the big beat--dancers on the whole tend to FEEL the beat 10x better than they intellectually understand it). On Tue, Feb 11, 2014 at 6:09 PM, Greg McKenzie <greken...@gmail.com> wrote: > Donna wrote: > > > Personally I prefer that the "regular dancers" do not verbally "teach" > the > > new dancers. > > > > I agree wholeheartedly and would not suggest that the regulars speak at all > during a walk-through. > > The only exception to that might be when a caller is doing such a poor job > that confusion is spreading wildly through the hall. Sometimes it is > necessary to clarify something when the caller makes a serious error and > does not realize it. Otherwise some dancers may think that the confusion > is *their *fault. That would be bad. > > The vast majority of the teaching that takes place in the dance hall is > non-verbal. As the only person in the hall with a microphone it is very > important that the caller realize that fact. Talking on mike is often much > more disruptive than talking in the dance line. > > - Greg McKenzie > West Coast, USA > _______________________________________________ > Callers mailing list > call...@sharedweight.net > http://www.sharedweight.net/mailman/listinfo/callers >
