On Wed, Feb 12, 2014, Alan Winston wrote: > On 2/12/2014 10:54 PM, Aahz Maruch wrote: >>On Wed, Feb 12, 2014, Greg McKenzie wrote: >>> >>>Well-structured calling is not easy. It does however make a subtle but >>>significant difference in how confident the dancers feel--particularly at >>>open, public social events. That is why I structure my calls carefully and >>>write the calls out verbatim on my cards. That is also why I advocate for >>>callers at open public contra dances to use dance cards when calling. >>>Making up calls on the fly often puts the onus on the dancers to get the >>>timing right. >> >>While I don't particularly disagree with you, particularly for me at this >>stage in my calling career, I do find it interesting that your advice to >>avoid making up calls on the fly is almost universally ignored by MWSD >>callers -- and with the majority of square dance callers (which is to >>say, almost all the good ones), it's not the dancers who face the onus of >>getting the timing right. > > Aahz, when Greg says "callers at open public contra dances" he really, > really means it. The MWSD world is almost the opposite of what he's > talking about. I:f you can figure that anyone at your dance has been > to classes and knows figures, you can do a lot differently. > > Greg's idea is that at OPCD, anybody can walk through the door, > receive no lesson from a caller, and be swept up by the experienced > dancers (eg, anyone who's ever done it before); the caller needs to > avoid it making it unattractive for experienced dancers to dance with > newcomers (eg, running dances a shorter time so that experienced > dancers will know they're not making a huge time commitment if they > dance with a newcomer), conveying the dance with effective word order > and perfect timing, and pretty much not teaching anything, leaving > that up to the experienced dancers.
Yuck. ;-) And I'm speaking with my contra dancer hat. > MWSD caller responsibility: Call an entertaining program at whatever > level the dance is advertised to be that works for the people there. > > OPCD caller responsibility: Integrate the floor as much as possible > and stay out of the way of the teaching that's happening on the > floor. > > (Greg, is that fair?) Assuming that it is fair, my point still stands, particularly given the need for experienced dancers with Greg's approach. I've been to square dances classes as an "angel" (experienced dancer to seed the crowd, which is a standard component of square dance classes), and a good square dance teacher is still going to be doing singing calls on the fly, with proper timing, adjusting to the class that they have, relying on the angels for a lot of the instruction/guidance. I also wonder to what extent this has any relationship to the fact that square dance callers are statistically considerably better than contra callers at enunciating. That is, with my hearing impairment (deaf with cochlear implant), I often hear square dance callers better over the music than I do contra callers without music during the walkthrough. (I'm entirely amenable to the possibility that the sound system has something to do with this, but it's something I have noticed across a large number of different halls and callers, so if the sound system has significant effect, it's something that is "standard" for contra sound setup.) All of which is a roundabout way of wondering what we as contra callers can learn from square dance callers. -- Hugs and backrubs -- I break Rule 6 http://rule6.info/ <*> <*> <*> Help a hearing-impaired person: http://rule6.info/hearing.html
