Really thoughtful comments from everyone. I appreciate Greg reframing this
point to clarify that while the caller may not always be at fault, the caller
always must take responsibility. Hear hear. Two further points:
1) Context does matter. Most gigs have few enough dancers that callers can
intervene vocally or physically when problems occur on the dance floor. And
careful advance planning can pre-empt many problems. But if a minor breakdown
occurs in a hall of 500 dancers, as in my earlier example, I'd argue that not
only should the caller consider not intervening, but that this minor breakdown
is a sign of success, not failure.
Why success? For one thing, having only minor breakdowns in a hall with that
many dancers indicates that overall, the caller has exercised effective
programming, set management, and calling techniques; otherwise, major rather
than minor breakdowns would have ensued. Second, the caller has the maturity
and confidence NOT to intervene upon seeing every individual breakdown on the
floor, which at best would be distracting to the majority of the dancers and at
worst would be impossible. Evaluating when intervention is merited is itself a
caller skill.
2) Lewis used the metaphor of conducting an orchestra to show how the caller is
responsible for meshing everything together from the helm. This metaphor is
accurate in the sense that callers, like conductors, do "conduct" all parties
at the dance into a coherent whole. But it's also important to recognize the
limitations of the metaphor: unlike conductors, callers exercise limited
control over who is in their "orchestra."
Generally, anyone in the orchestra has reached a certain level of mastery and
has been individually selected to be there. In contrast, as Dan Pearl's post
illustrated, callers are at the mercy of whoever shows up to dance, and
sometimes those dancers present challenges beyond the callers' ability to
efficiently remediate. Even the most talented conductors would be severely
challenged if forced to conduct an orchestra formed moments earlier and made up
of people who have never before touched an instrument.
Jeremy
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