Hi Sue, At Rochester, NY Thanksgiving Festival, we tried this year to have a "Family Friendly" line. It wound up being hard to keep that line going, because the beginners tended to join it as well, so without enough experienced dancers, it tended to fall behind the rest of the hall. The caller did a Great Job of keeping an eye on the trouble brewing and kept the line together, though.
Next year, we'll try making it a "Kid Friendly" line, and try to steer beginners to more experienced partners. The issue was identified by several comments on the survey from the prior year, and the organizing committee decided that we wanted to remain inclusive, and safe for the kids, while not degrading the experience of people who paid for a weekend of dancing of the quality they have come to expect from that event. We explained to people with kids, as they came in, that it was for safety. It was well received by everyone we spoke to. In a message dated 1/17/09 12:00:23 PM, [email protected] writes: > Date: Sat, 17 Jan 2009 11:38:42 -0500 > From: Sue Robishaw <[email protected]> > Subject: [Callers] Young Children at Dance > To: CallersList <[email protected]> > Message-ID: <[email protected]> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset="ISO-8859-1" > > Hi, > How have you handled parents bringing their too young children into > a dance insisting "they can do the dance" when they are too small/young > to participate in any meaningful way, and generally are just confused, > clog up the dance and prevent the others from dancing (and the > youngster from having any fun either)? This is probably not a problem > at your usual contra dance, but at "family dance" events (longways and > such). > Cheers, > Sue R. > > -- > ************** Inauguration '09: Get complete coverage from the nation's capital.(http://www.aol.com?ncid=emlcntaolcom00000027)
