Hello everyone!
We had our New Callers Dance on Saturday night and it went very well! We
had around 25 people show up (which means that we didn't cover our costs
8^( ), but they were all our friends and mostly very experienced
dancers. We had one teenager who was relatively new to dancing and one
woman for whom this was her second dance. The music by Amy Larkin and
Larry Unger was great! They were also very easy to work with. We put out
feedback forms and we all got lots of pointers! It was funny watching
our resident callers (Lisa G. and Sue Rosen) run back to the table, fill
out forms, then jump into the next dance together. 8^)
I was not as nervous about getting up in front of people as I thought I
was going to be. Most likely because I knew almost everyone in the room
and the crowd was much smaller than Pinewoods. My first dance (Forgotten
Treasure) went very well. I was nervous about the size of the crowd and
whether or not I could do the circle mixer, and I was considering using
the backup dance that I brought (The Baby Rose). I asked Seth's advice
when he was out at the top of the set, and he wouldn't let me back out
of it. 8^)
Love and Kisses turns out to be more challenging to call than I thought
when I first selected it, with the right and left grand around the
circle. I had some problems teaching it, also. I was late telling the
men which hand to take with their partner for the wavy ring, and I
missed the opportunity to tell them to balance forward and back instead
of right and left (which would have felt much better). I was too
tentative with my prompting the first couple of times through the dance
(and missed some prompts, too), but hit my stride for the next couple. I
managed to rattle off the prompting that I worked out on paper and
practiced beforehand (much thanks to Bob Golder for helping me with
that). I got a couple of feedback forms with the usual circle mixer
complaints, but I felt it was important to have the experience of
calling one and I'm glad that I took up the challenge of calling a high
piece count dance. I also caught some people digging it. 8^)
The main criticisms of the last two dances (Carousel and Another Nice
Combination) were that I didn't prompt long enough for the dancers to
solidify the sequence in memory. I also didn't prompt the transitions
that required a little more thought from the dancers long enough. I had
one moment in ANC where I accidentally called the Circle Left when the
dancers were supposed to Ladies Chain. I realized immediately that
something was wrong when half the set did one and half did the other. I
immediately called Ladies Chain (late) then continued the sequence on
time from there. This is where having so many experienced dancers saved
my butt. Their recovery skills meant that they were back on sequence by
the end of B2. I called the dance a couple of more times through to
cement the correct sequence in their memory and backed out.
All in all, I'm happy with how I did. I didn't have any catastrophic
errors and the dancers had a great time. It was great to go first. After
I finished, I changed into dancing clothes and danced the rest of the
afternoon relaxed and carefree! 8^)
Some of you know about my next challenge: I'm calling a full evening in
East Sandwich (on Cape Cod) on December 18th with Amy and Jonathan
Larkin. I have been working on my program, but have a couple of slots
that I haven't been able to fill. So I've been looking through Give and
Take (Larry Jenning's new book) for dances. I think I have a couple
picked out now, and will post my program soon for comment.
WoooHooo!!! And away we go!
Chris
I felt like I did a good job of keeping an eye on the dancers and
watching what was going on.
Chris Weiler wrote:
For those of you in the Boston area:
A New Callers Dance
Saturday, December 4th, 2-5pm
in Arlington, MA
Introducing callers:
Chris Weiler
Seth Seeger
Nathaniel Jack
Flyer:
http://www.seeger.ws/dec4_contradance.pdf
We hope that people can come and support us!
Thanks!
Chris
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