Hi, thanks for the help, see below. And BTW, I forgot to mention in my intro that I'm also very involved with NEFFA as a Director and being the guy responsible for Advance Ticket Sales and getting the sound equipment into the smaller venues for several years. Late night/new parent brain. :)
On Fri, Dec 2, 2011 at 2:01 AM, Alan Winston - SSRL Central Computing < wins...@slac.stanford.edu> wrote: > > [snip] > > I'm pretty confident in my > > dance selection skills but I'm definitely still counting my way through > the > > music to call. So one concern is with making sure I stay firmly anchored > to > > the music, without depending upon the crowd for cues. I craft my calls to > > fit the phrasing and rehearse with music to get confident but dance > > breakdowns are a fear. I've come close a couple of times early on but > have > > been able to set things right somehow on the fly... however, I was not > very > > confident doing so at the time. > > Hmm. Do you pay attention to the music when you're dancing? Do you know > where > you are in the tune when you're on the floor? You kinda need for that to > be > second nature - something you don't have to spend conscious brain cycles > on. > If it isn't, I can only suggest even more practice with recorded music than > you're doing, plus trying to be conscious about it when you're dancing, so > you > always know what phrase you're in. (If you're a good dancer, you probably > do > actually know this, but you might not know you do.) > > > Good point. Yes, as a dancer with that form of immersion in the dance, I'm totally in sync with the music and choreography without counting. I just know/feel what comes next and when. I guess the point then is that I need to transfer that connectedness while being on the other side of the mic. [snip] > > > > - In working with the musicians, are there any customary "I've lost > track, > > where are we in the music?" signals? > > No, and you really don't want to do that. It's much likelier that they're > going > to repeat something they shouldn't or not to repeat something they should > than > that you're going to get lost. You need to be ready to say to somebody > "Play > another B!" > > > Interesting! Will work on that. > Find some couples who are doing the dance right and check in on where they > are > in the pattern. If there aren't any you can rely on, then you picked the > wrong > dance. > > I agree on the dance selection - my "breakdown" near misses to date were either from rookie mistakes (like calling a balanceandswing instead of balance...and swing) or an alignment of the planets around a particular 4-some in a line. I'm a mis-matcher by nature -- I see/focus on what sticks out. So when a 4-some is having trouble then that is where my attention naturally goes. I need to make the shift in this instance to see but not overly focus on that local issue, if the rest of the hall is OK. And picking some trusty couples would certainly help. Thanks again!
