Dear Maia,
You may want to search back in the archives of this list. Several very
helpful discussions have happened in the past, and I bet you will find
a lot of great ideas. Good luck with your calling!
warmly, Linda Leslie
On Sep 4, 2012, at 11:45 AM, Maia McCormick wrote:
Hey folks,
My name is Maia, and I'm new to this listserv, though I've been
lurking
around for a few weeks. I call college dances at my school in
Western Mass,
and every now and then I do an area dance. I've got two questions
for your
collective wisdom.
The first: I'm curious how you all put together programs when
calling for a
group of complete beginners. What's generally the progression of
moves that
you teach? Do you think dances with the most basic of moves (say, a
dance
that's all circles, stars, and long lines, not even a partner swing)
are
helpful in getting people oriented to dancing, or are trivial and
boring
and will make people think contra is dumb? (People "thinking contra is
dumb" is actually a bit more of a concern for me calling college
dances,
where most of the folks to turn out aren't necessarily of the 'contra
mindset' and so it's important to hold their interest and make them
think
that what they're doing is exciting and worth their time--they're not
necessarily going to stick with it for the evening, or even for more
than
one dance, if they're not immediately into it.)
The second, which ties into the first: how do you teach good contra
etiquette--*especially* how to swing properly--when you don't have
experienced people in the crowd to show the way? At my dances at
school,
most of the swings are tensionless and/or an awkward sideways
gallop; very
few of us go to outside dances, so the overall experience level
seems to be
capped. Have you found an effective way to *teach* proper swinging,
besides
throwing a beginner into a crowd of experienced dances so that they
eventually absorb it by osmosis? How can I get swings at my college
dance
up to snuff?
Cheers,
Maia
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