Greg can correct me if I'm wrong, but when he refers to "making
up calls on the fly", I don't think he's referring to making up
choreograph on the fly. I think he's talking about the situation
where a caller has chosen a dance with fixed choreography but is
deciding on the fly what words to use in calling it and what beats
to say them on.
Let me explain by giving some examples. (And again, Greg can
comment if I'm misrepresenting him.)
If someone were to hand me a dance card with simple figures like
A1. Neighbors bal & sw
A2. Fwd and bk
W chain
I'm confident I could come up with appropriate and accurately timed
calls on the fly. I could even adjust them on the fly depending on
what I saw happening on the dance floor. For example, early in the
dance, I might use a 4-beat call like
in LONG LINES go FORward and BACK
After the dance was going a while, I might reduce it to a 2-beat call
FORward and BACK
for a while before dropping out entirely. If, for some reason, many
dancers were having trouble ending the swing on time, I might make
the call longer to allow more reaction time, for example
and WHEN you've SWUNG, make LONG LINES; go FORward and BACK
In each case, I'd know where to start the call (e.g., on beat 13 of
A1 for a 4-beat call, beat 15 for a 2-beat call, or beat 11 for a
6-beat call). And if the phrasing of the music was clear, I could
identify the correct starting beat for the call without explicitly
counting to myself.
I think many (most?) of you reading this are similarly able to call
such simple sequences with accurate timing and without needing to
have calls written out verbatim,
But what happens when we get to a dance that has several short moves
in succession, as for example in the B2 part of "Batja's Breakdown"
or of "Southern Swing"?
From "Batja's Breakdown" by Tom Hinds:
B2. Pass through to an ocean wave (4)
Balance the wave (4)
Neighbors allemande right 1/2; men allemande left 1/2;
partners allemande right 3/4 and look for your shadow (8)
From "Southern Swing" by Steve Zakon-Anderson:
B2. Women allemande right 1x, partners pull by* left hand, men
pull by* right hand; neighbors allemande left 1 1/4 to
meet new neighbor.
[*In place of "pull by left [or right]", I've also seen the
dance
notated with "pass by left [right]" or with "allemande L [R]
1/2".]
In this sort of situation, it may not be so easy to come up with clear,
accurately-timed calls on the fly. If you try to say for each move
who does it (partners/neighbors/men/women), what the move is (e.g.,
allemande), which hand to use, and how far to go, there simply may
not be enough time to squeeze it all in without starting to call
late. So you have to decide what to leave out. Maybe you can
sometimes leave out the word "allemande" (or even "turn") because
the dancers know from the walk-through that the dance ends with a
sequence of hand turns. Maybe you can count on the dancers to remember
that they use alternating hands (or shoulders). Maybe dancers can
infer how far to turn once you tell them who they have to meet for the
next action. Or, on the other hand, maybe there are points in the
sequence where it will really help dancers if you explicitly say one
of those things that you might have hoped dancers would be able to
remember (from the walk through) or infer on their own.
In any case, you must somehow decide what words to include in your
calling (and in what order) and what to leave out. You could just
lead a walk-through, signal the band to start, watch the dancers, and
trust that the appropriate and well-timed words to help them through
the dance will come into your brain and out of your mouth. But if you
do so, you may find that your first try isn't so great and that it
takes you a few repeats of the dance to refine it. Those first few
rounds of the dance, however, are the ones where dancers would most
benefit from clear and well-timed calling, both to guide them through
the figures with the right timing and to get the feeling of the right
timing into their memory for the rest of the dance.
Greg's suggestion (as I understand it) is that you plan the exact
wording and timing of the calls in advance and have them written on
the dance card. He might (I'm not sure) carry this idea further
and advocate writing out exact call wording/timing even for simple
sequences like the one I gave near the beginning of this message
A1. Neighbors bal & sw
A2. Fwd and bk
W chain
He might even recommend (again, I'm not sure) that callers use a
notation based on the words and timing of the calls, rather than on
the timing of the figures, as the primary notation (or even the sole
notation) on their dance cards. (And one more time, let me emphasize
that I don't really know how far Greg goes in this direction. Only
he can tell us for sure.)
--Jim
On Feb 12, 2014, at 11:32 PM, 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.
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?)
-- Alan
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