Greg, For the dances where this is true, that's great. I have attended dances where that's the value of the community, and I love dance organizations and communities who foster that.
I've also been to a lot of dances where a specific culture of "we're here to dance with a lot of people" is not the default case. That is, in fact, the reason I brought up the "booking ahead" problem in the first place; I recognize that there are exceptions, and you've pointed some out, but by and large: ** Booking ahead is done because people want to dance with a small subset of dancers who are their friends / the "cool, hip dancers" / etc. ** So I don't, as a caller, make the assumption that you present. Instead, I believe that unless a dance specifically fosters a new-dancer-friendly, inclusive environment, and goes out of its way to post signs / e-mails / promote discussion with callers / etc, dancers will generally see a narrow view of what's going on at the dance. It's up to organizers and callers, I believe, to specifically shape the dance to a friendly environment ... ... if that's the dance's goal. in dance, Ron On Sat, Jan 19, 2013 at 1:10 PM, Greg McKenzie <[email protected]> wrote: > > > My approach is to assume the best of the dancers and allow them to take the > initiative and rise to the occasion. I assume that all dancers at an open, > public contra dance are attracted to that venue--at least in part--by the > prospect of dancing with lots of folks new to them personally and new to > dancing contras. As a caller it is my responsibility to make that process > both easy and fun for them. > > My experience is that this assumption always pays off. I am not saying it > works perfectly every time. >
