Have a great time, Noah!
I, too, have called a large number of dances for groups of total
beginners. I find these events to be some of the most satisfying of my
calling adventures! I agree wholeheartedly with Chip that ignoring
gender roles is very important. It allows you to be more flexible, and
avoids the whole "who asks whom?" problem. A dance I use a lot is the
following three face three formation. I *don't* talk about ones/twos/
actives/inactives. Rather I mention that the direction the dancers are
facing is "home". "Home changes at the ends, but that makes things
more fun!" Without much teaching, dancers have actually learned how
to progress.....I wrote the dance for just these sorts of occasions.
Do Si Three
A1 Hands 6 circle left
Circle right (make sure you are home!)
A2 Ends only do si do your opposite neighbor
Middles only do si do your opposite neighbor
B1 Ends 2 hand swing (go home!)
Middles 2 hand swing
B2 Lines of three (hold hands) go forward and back
(drop hands) Forward and again and pass through to new neighbors
Dancers love this dance for a lot of reasons: they learn it quickly;
they love passing through to new neighbors; there is no pressure
concerning who your partners happen to be; if the lines are not too
long, you can call it until they get back to their original neighbors--
which surprises and delights them; and it is very easy to keep the
dancers dancing to the musical phrases.
One other thought: especially for a one hour gig, I rarely teach a
"contra swing". Dancers can do a 2 hand turn swing without much
teaching, and it is a move that can be done by 2 girls, 2 boys, or a
mixed gender couple, without any confusion.
I also use a lot of longways sets (Le Brandy, Alabama Gal, Boston Tea
Party), some Sicilian Circles, and circle mixers. For circle mixers, I
invite the dancers to give names to "the person on the left, and the
person on the right" if I wish to keep the dance gender role free.
School age kids love the opportunity to be involved in this way. My
favorite circle mixer is:
I Don't Know Why
A1 Circle left
Circle right
A2 Everyone into the center and back
Just the dancers on the right (lady position) into the center,
turn around to face out
Everybody face the person on the left*
B1 do si do this new partner
2 hand swing this new partner
B2 Promenade
*the first time through the dance, I have the dancers face the
person they asked to dance, so that they get to do the whole dance
with this individual; the next time through, they find new partners.
It is wonderful to experience how quickly dancers "get it", and how
much fun they have dancing with a new partner each time through.
If you would like to have other dances, please get in touch with me,
and I will be glad to share some others that work very, very well with
groups like yours.
warmly, Linda Leslie
On May 22, 2010, at 1:14 AM, Chip Hedler wrote:
Seems like I've called a kajillion dances for total beginners,
including
many rowdy, well-lubricated wedding parties, some K-3rd-grade
groups, and
one memorable reception in a gym full of of wound-up Russian high-
school
exchange students, few of whom understood English, and their
American peers,
none of whom had done any American traditional dance before. I
largely agree
with everything that everyone else has said and recommended...
...And yet, in more than 75% of these cases I've chosen to include the
contra "Ellen's Green Jig" by Roy Dommett or one of several
variations on it
I've evolved. It takes a little longer to walk through, which I do
at least
twice, but it has never, ever failed (sorry if I'm duplicating some
info I
think I've posted before). I think that's mostly because of the high
level
of connection sustained and the small amount of movement away from
original
places. The walkthrough demands enough attention that it actually
defuses a
lot of that random unfocused adolescent energy. I disregard gender and
improper formation completely for the most challenging situations.
Lots of
practice with such groups has significantly built up my comfort and
confidence, but this dance worked just as well way back when I was
starting
out. If there are others that people can trust to work this well,
please
share them. Here's the original and a couple tweaked versions:
A1: Dosido below; !s (actives) dosido;
A2: 1s bal, swing
B!: Circle L and R
B2: 2s arch, 1s take a peek; 1s arch, 2s peek;
2s carry arch over the 1s, who duck, then advance to next
Insisting that the 2s don't just stand still and let the 1s go
through the
arch prevents the set getting dragged down the hall.
Variations:
A1: As couples, 1s and 2s dosido; circle L
A2: All bal, swing
B1: Star R, circle R
A1: Dosido below; circle L
Depending upon how the group has responded to material such as
others have
suggested, I mix and match the various components above...
...And meanwhile: just last summer, I was asked to guest-call at a
MWSD club
retreat in northern Vermont. The saving grace was that my invitation
was set
up through some musicians who had been invited to play at the
retreat during
a break between SD sessions. Having that live music at the right tempo
totally uncoupled the wary "shuffle quickly, then wait" pattern that
characterized the 45 minutes of mixed-ability and advanced level
MWSD done
to recorded SD beats (and genuinely skillful prompting) before we
were on.
We did a Virginia Reel variant, then an Ellen's Green variant, and the
behavior of these mostly 40-plus-year-olds rapidly became almost
identical
to what you often see with high-schoolers: lots of exhausting
skipping and
sashaying through the figures, laughter, and the kind of giddiness
that gets
in the way of hearing the next call. Who'da thunk it? And after it
was all
over they asked where else they could do this sort of thing.
Chip Hedler
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