Integrating newcomers into the dance community is a core skill for
contra dance callers. It is a key metric I use to judge the skill of
a caller because it is one of the most difficult tasks.
Personally, I love dancing with newcomers and put significant
personal energy into partnering with them, particularly in the early
part of the evening. When addressing the issue of integration please
consider how your tactics will affect dancers who take the initiative
to integrate themselves. Mixers, for example, will thwart my efforts
because I will lose the newcomer I have put effort into partnering
with. Some of the more heavy-handed tactics mentioned here can have
a similar effect. They can also send the implicit message that the
caller feels that some experienced dancers are behaving poorly by not
mixing in with newcomers.
A better strategy is to assume that all of the experienced dancers
will support your efforts to integrate newcomers and simply assume
that all newcomers will be matched up with people who have danced at
least one night of contras. The result of this assumption is that
you can eliminate much of the instruction a less experienced caller
will tend to use when confronted by a large percentage of newcomers.
My experience is that when the experienced dancers fail to seek out
and partner with newcomers it is a sign of poor calling, either by
the current caller or by regular callers at the series. It is the
caller's job to make sure that everyone in the hall has a good time
regardless of what the dancer's skill level is, with whom they are
dancing, or where they are located in the hall. If the caller is
successful in doing this job, almost all of the experienced dancers
will quickly learn that dancing with newcomers is as much fun as
dancing with other experienced dancers.
This is a big subject area. There are many subtle tactics and skills
that callers can and must use to accomplish good integration. The
key is to bring all of your calling skills to the task. Calling for
a hall of experienced dancers is an easy gig. A mixed hall is much
more demanding of your knowledge and skill.
Just a thought,
Greg McKenzie
********
At 01:01 PM 1/26/2009, you wrote:
In a small dance I called recently, an enthusiastic but
inexperienced group of young people almost always lined up in a
foursome together. There it worked to walk the contra dances
through twice, then start the dance from the progressed positions
where the foursome was not with each other. Some communities
wouldn't like this, but there I think everyone was also happy with
the suggestion they take whoever they ended up with after a mixer
for the next dance; also, they were happy with a few mixers in
various formations.
Another idea I often use when I teach the workshop is to make the
last dance they learn in the workshop the first dance of the
evening, often Becky Hill's Simplicity Swing or a variation of it
with a hey at the end instead of a star and do-si-do. (Is there a
name and author for that dance? Surely I didn't make that one
up?) That way, the new dancers who attended the workshop already
know the dance and it's the experienced dancers who need the walkthrough.
----- Original Message ----- From: "Jerome Grisanti"
<[email protected]>
To: <[email protected]>
Sent: Monday, January 26, 2009 1:25 PM
Subject: [Callers] Spreading out the "Inexperience"
I recently had the following exchange on a different list with Michael
Shapiro (guitarist with U4):
Michael wrote:
U4 just played the SwingShift weekend in Lexington/Berea. The caller was
Barbara Groh. She did something that I think most callers should do, but I
haven't seen before. After the sets were formed and people had done the hand
four, she then broke up the beginners sets that had formed at the end of the
lines. She asked then to move forward and intersperse themselves with the
more advanced dancers (so that they were more toward the beggining of the
line and the foursomes were not all beginners).
She was also good at letting the music be heard ...
I wrote:
Regarding the caller asking sets to reform in order to spread the less
experienced dancers throughout the hall, much tact is required. Generally,
callers strive to avoid calling attention to particular dancers other than
when asking people to watch a demonstration, but asking people to change
sets can have the effect of making them feel like there is attention on
them. In addition, newish dancers want to dance with people they know, even
if those friends may also be newish dancers.
Speaking to the entire crowd, I do encourage experienced dancers to share
their experience by asking someone they've never met to dance at least once
in the evening, and praise the community for being so welcoming to newcomer
dancers. So while I might be thinking "let's break up this clump of
confusion," it would not be good to say something that draws attention to
"you people right here."
I have asked, off mic, for a set of experienced dancers to offer to
repartner with a set of inexperienced dancers down the line.
To this list, I ask:
I'd be interested in the wording that Barbara Groh used (which I'm assuming
was quite gentle). I'm also guessing other callers on this list have
developed tactful ways to address this issue.
Thanks,
Jerome
--
Jerome Grisanti
660-528-0858
http://www.jeromegrisanti.com
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