I think you need to be careful when considering "booking ahead". For
example, consider the person who, during a dance, asks a friend during a
swing for the next dance. Is that booking ahead? Or what about the
person who asks for a dance and who is told that the (s)he's already got
a partner, but how about the following dance. Is that booking ahead?
Be careful about focusing on what people should not do (dancing with
their friends!). Instead it may help to focus on the new people, the
first time dancers in the room. Remind people to be inclusive and to ask
someone they don't know or a new dancer to dance. New dancers need to do
that all the time and it is a good idea to remind the regulars about
that. I find that the best dances are those where the new comers are
accepted and drawn into the dance. Someone who comes to a dance and
spends the whole night sitting on the side is probably not going to return.
A big gender imbalance at a smaller dance usually makes this worse. If
you can find ways to fix these problems, booking ahead often becomes a
smaller problem.
Rich.
Seth Tepfer wrote:
People book ahead at our local dance. I despise the practice, but I
understand where it comes from, and have been prone to it myself (can I
have a witness?). It is a problem that is rife at our dance weekends and
our local dance.
I do not want to get into a religious discussion about whether booking
ahead is good or bad. Save that discussion for another time.
I would like to hear creative ideas for avoiding/sideswiping/eliminating
the booking ahead issue.
Here's what is in my [mostly ineffective] toybox:
* after a circle mixer (square, etc), have people take that last partner
(corner in square, last neighbor, etc) to be their partner for the next contra
* ask that everyone dancing ask someone who was sitting out last time to dance
* do a scatter mixer
* model good behavior [especially after Lisa called me out at SnowBall, 2004!]
* wear my 'I don't book ahead" button
What other creative ideas are there out in the dance ethos?
Thanks
seth
PS I really really really want to cross-post this to the trad-callers
listserv, because I know they'd have ideas there too. But I'm trying to be
good and not cross-post. Okay, climbing off martyr soapbox now. :-)
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