if the experienced dancers are jumping the gun, i have no problem saying, early
in the evening, something like "i know a lot of you know this, but for my own
(the caller's) benefit, if everybody would do this TOGETHER, i can make sure
everybody has it and we'll be dancing sooner. thanks for your cooperation!"
as a matter of principle, i NEVER say "...this may be
difficult/hard/confusing..." EVER. the caller's in charge. if you tell them
it's hard, they'll believe you and it WILL be hard. if i say something like
"...this isn't hard, just a little different...", and i'm convincing, then they
won't think it's hard and it WON'T be hard!
i approach every dance assuming that the dancers CAN do whatever i ask. 99% of
the time, they believe/trust me, and there is no problem. i've been calling
kathy anderson's "tropical gentleman" lately, which has a celtic hey. many
callers have told me this is a "hard" figure and so they don't use it much, or
only for experienced dances. i find i have very few problems with figures like
this as long as i tell people they CAN do it. i've never had it break down,
and i've had a lot of beginners get through it with no problem - in fact, they
often do better than "experienced" dancers, because they have no conception
that it should be "hard" and they're more willing to follow directions.
of course, this only works if *I* know what i'm doing, and i explain things
clearly (and i'm not afraid to jump onto the floor and do a demo - a demo is
worth a thousand words, and a lot faster, too!!) my own personal experience is
that very few dancers have problems with *any* calls if my programming and
teaching are appropriate to the crowd. if a lot of dancers are having
problems, it's almost certainly something i'm doing wrong.
so - tell the dancers everything will go faster if they walk thru everything
together and tell them it's easy. be convincing, and both will be true.
barb
> Date: Wed, 6 Feb 2008 14:34:34 -0500> From: [email protected]> To:
> [email protected]> Subject: Re: [Callers] don't do it yet!> > This
> happens a lot and I have a couple of approaches to it.> > First, if most of
> the dancers know what they are doing (and there is no > knot of newbies
> somewhere at the end of a line), I won't worry about > people jumping ahead,
> as a detailed description is not necessary.> > If enough dancers may have a
> problem with a specific call, I'll be > careful to set it up and explain it
> before I call it. So, for example > after a ladies chain, I might say "The
> next call may be difficult for > some.
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