Gang --
Wasn't really sure of the subject line, but thought I might as well not
say "memetic entrapment" because who would want to read it?
Anyway, a phenomenon I've noticed several times over the years is that
some fraction of people who were in a beginner workshop and who in the
walkthrough of the dance were able to do something like "women chain to
partner, women allemande 1x, partner balance and swing" are no longer
able to do it, instead pretty reliably doing "women pull by, partner
swing" and confusion. [That one's recoverable, although if they then
stop swinging early and move on to the after-the-swing figure it can
require attention.]
This is likelier to happen if both partners are new, and likeliest to
happen if all four in that set are new. But that couple that's new will
have that problem repeatedly. When I see that I continue to prompt the
figures, maybe with more emphasis - Ladies CHAIN and COURTESY TURN -
and it doesn't seem to make any difference.
(I'm reminded of something that happens to beginning English dancers.
"Back to back" (non-spinning do-si-do) and "Cross and go below" start
the same way - striding out to pass partner by the right shoulder. If
there's a do-si-do in dance #1 and a "Cross and go below" in dance #2,
they'll do the cross and go below in the walkthrough once they get the
idea, but once the dance is up and running, when it comes time for that
move they'll try to do-si-do, with resultant levels of chaos. That one
has the obvious feature that even if half of the partnership is doing it
right the other half can't see them, so there's no feedback about
anything going wrong until the 2s move up to fill the spot that one of
the 1s is still in, or only one of the 2s moves up, or neither of the 2s
moves up.)
This either doesn't happen to dancers who have been coming for a while
or is corrected quickly if it does, maybe by noticing what everybody
else in the line is doing.
My hypothesis is that these are people who are still drinking from the
firehose. (The first time you come you hear everything important about
contra dancing and probably get exposed to half or more of the common
figures. It's a big cognitive load. The second time you hear the same
things again and get exposed to many fewer new-to-you figures, and by
the third time you might be successfully associating the figures with
the names - the flow of novelty is at a trickle and easy to absorb.)
They're not ignoring the caller, per se, but they don't have CPU left
over to process the prompts and in any case the words aren't really
meaning anything to them yet; if a prompt changes what they're doing
they're going to take four-six beats to get organized enough to respond
to the prompt. )
This will get sorted out if they keep coming back, probably. But they
may be less likely to return if they were confused and overstretched
through the whole evening, and this is the kind of thing that leaves you
confused.
What do you guys do about this kind of thing? I already keep prompting
clearly and in a timely way, refrain from shouting "No!" over the
microphone, don't lose my cool (a place that took me a while to get to,
incidentally). What else can I do to help these people succeed?
[Also happy to hear alternative views of what's going on inside these
people.)
-- Alan
- [Callers] New contra dancers and similar figures Alan Winston
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