Brian Hamshar wrote: > > a key to solving that problem of experienced dancers making > assumptions is to seriously economize on words in general, and then > when needed, you say something like, "Now listen up here, because > this isn't quite what you may be expecting." >
I agree this is key. Don't train dancers to ignore you by saying lots of useless things. People tune out really quickly when they stop expecting to need the information you have. You need to earn their trust both that you will tell them what they need to know and that you won't talk their ears off. Different dancers need different amounts of verbal assistance, and you're going to be giving some people too much and others too little. Which is unavoidable, but you can at least try and find out how little speaking you need with a particular crowd on a particular evening, letting the new dancers do a lot of their learning from the movements of your regulars. (And if experienced dancers reliably screw up a dance you like to call because they're "making assumptions", you might want to ask yourself whether it's really a good dance for the people you tend to call it for. We have all sorts of conventions (circles go left, ones progress down, swings end with the phrase) and part of how dancers recover from errors [1] is by relying on these conventions. If a dance flouts a convention it should be good enough to make up for the additional cognitive load it's putting on everyone. And you should be anticipating usually-helpful but currently-wrong assumptions dancers make, heading them off before the dancers act on them. [2]) Jeff [1] By callers, musicians, and other dancers.
