Thanks for asking! I've been meaning to get this out for a few days
now.
My first full calling gig in East Sandwich, MA went VERY well! East
Sandwich is a wonderful dance community with fun people. Sadly, it is
one where attendance can greatly fluctuate. Fortunately, I brought
along 10 friends which brought the dance up to about 20 people.
I think programming the dance was one of the hardest parts. Mostly
because my collection of dances is still pretty small, I didn't have a
nice library to pull dances from. (While I do have a good number of
book resources, it's hard to pull dances out of them - I prefer dances
that I've danced before.) Half way through the planning, I realized
that all but one dance had allemandes in them! Linda Leslie was
wonderful and spent a few hours on the phone with me helping me through
dance placement and ordering.
I started out using the planning matrix from the back of Give & Take,
but found that it had too much information on it. I ended up using a
grid that I got from Lisa Greenleaf that only has 14 criteria, instead
of the 35 in G&T. I am planning on moving all my dances to white index
cards, so I can highlight moves (all in different colors). That will
allow me to plan out my evening visually, instead of on a paper.
(Rearranging cards on a table is easier than having to continually
re-write the planning matrix.)
Here is what I ended up with:
1. Cascades - Orace Johnson
2. Al's Safeway Produce - Robert Cromartie
3. Simplicity Give & Take - Linda Leslie (was Simplicity Swing by
Becky Hill)
4. Carousel - Tom Hinds
5. Square Affair - Becky Hill
6. Roll Eleven - Sue Rosen & Larry Jennings
*break*
7. Ramsey Chase - Joseph Pimentel
8. Mary Cay's Reel - David Kaynor
9. Happy As A Cold Pig In Warm Mud - Mike Boerschig
10. Rockin' Robin - Rick Mohr
11. Marian's Delight - Carol Kopp
The evening was fun - surprisingly I wasn't nervous! Working with Amy
and John Larkin was fantastic. Very flexible and easy to work with. I
didn't worry at all about what kind of music to put to each dance.
Just show Amy the card and she makes great picks.
A few times, I found myself calling an incorrect call (during the
dance). It would happen without me even knowing! (Fortunately, the
dancers weren't listing to me by that point!) One dance did start to
fall apart - I don't know if I said something incorrect or if the dance
was just hard to keep track of. Luckily, one of my trusty dancers knew
where we were supposed to be and the dance continued on. (I had lost
my place too!) By the end of the evening, I was completely exhausted,
but I felt great.
For three of the dances, I had written out the patter (because I had a
lot to say). However, I found reading off of this different format
difficult and disorienting. In the future, I will work harder to
memorize the patter I want say so I can just call of my card like I did
for the rest of dances.
One last piece of difficulty I had was remembering where dancers had
started in the line. It must have just been one too many things for me
to keep track of. I tried remembering who was at the top of the line,
and I tried picking one person and always looking to see where they
started. Neither worked with great success. Everything worked out
just fine in the end, though. Amy was great about extending the dance
out one more time through when I had miscalculated having everyone in
for the last time through the dance.
Now that all is said and done, I am pretty happy with my program. It
had a lot of dances in it that I really like to dance. I still felt
that it had a bit of repetition in the moves, but it can't always be
avoided.
Seth
