On 11/27/2012 12:32 PM, Colin Hume wrote:
On Tue, 27 Nov 2012 15:12:37 -0500, Maia McCormick wrote:
Do you do it? Or use cards? Do you think it's important to commit
dances to memory? Do you memorize your entire collection, or just a
few? (And if just a few, which sorts of dances are the most prudent
to memorize?)
I have a large repertoire and not a good memory. I used to use cards;
now that my eyes have got worse I use a lap-top.
I don't think it's important to commit dances to memory (and I
certainly couldn't do it with contras) but it is important to have
studied the dance when you got it and written it out in your own
words, so that you are confident you can call it from those words. If
I have problems with a dance I make sure to update my instructions so
that it's clearer (to me and the dancers) next time.
Amen to that! Especially about needing to have digested the dance
before ever calling it for a live crowd. I'd never call a dance cold
out of a book or from someone else's card.
A few dances have gradually sunk into my brain enough for me to call
them without a card as backup, but mostly I like to have the cards there
to get me rolling. The dances I do have cold as a result of deliberate
memorization, as opposed to gradual accretion or osmosis, are the ones I
tend to use with the most basic beginning groups where my attention on
the floor is the most crucial, and where I feel like I really need to be
making connections with the dancers.
I'm in awe of callers like Andrew Shaw who can get through a night of
extremely complex dances (he's an English caller, for those of you who
don't know him) without ever visibly checking his notes.
It's also important not to stand there with the card in front of your
face - people lose confidence in you and you won't see what goes
wrong. Put your card on a table or stand and refer to it when
necessary, but you must be focused on the dancers.
And again, yes, Colin's right on the money here. The card is an aid but
it's great to have it be a transparent one. I don't always succeed with
that, since I'm often on the floor with the dancers and need to have the
card on my person somewhere, but I try to just peek at it and then put
it away so I can work directly with the dancers. Sometimes I'm more
successful at this than at other times :>)
As a sidenote, I find it much, much harder to get away from my cards in
contra than in English dancing. Contras are so interchangeable to my
still unpracticed eye that it's very easy for me to lose track of where
I am without referring to the card. English dances tend to be much more
texturally different from each other, and easier to find your place in
as a caller. That's my experience anyway. Those of you who call both,
does this sound familiar?
Kalia (enjoying a mostly-gig-free December. Ahhhhh...)
