You raise a good point. It took a long time for someone to impress upon me that, although I have no problem with positional calling, many people do. Different people have different strengths.
When calling for a group of beginners, I've found that things go more smoothly if I know several ways to describe an action, and use them all. "Look for the next, look away from the couple you've been dancing with, for a new person." Some people will understand that they are dancing with one couple after another and turn the right way when I say "Look for the next", some are orienting themselves relative to the other couple and find "look away from the other couple" clearer, and some do not have a strong positional sense but will look around for a new person to dance with. Different calls work best for different dancers. Jacob On Wed, Jun 3, 2015 at 11:58 AM, Aahz Maruch via Callers < [email protected]> wrote: > On Wed, Jun 03, 2015, Jim Hemphill via Callers wrote: > > > > I realize that it is much easier on callers to just substitute a label > for > > ladies and gents on their calling cards. It shifts the burden onto the > > dancers who haven't grown up in a genderless dance environment as their > > brains translate the label into a term they are used to. Positional > > teaching and calling is more challenging for the caller. Not every dance > > will lend itself to this technique but I bet with a little thought most > > would. > > Positional calling is also considerably more difficult for at least some > dancers. My perception is that changing the "gender" label is pretty > easy for most dancers -- at least, I've never seen many people struggling > with it, and I do see people struggling with contra corners (which is the > most common use-case in standard contra dancing). > -- > Hugs and backrubs -- I break Rule 6 > http://rule6.info/ > <*> <*> <*> > Help a hearing-impaired person: http://rule6.info/hearing.html > _______________________________________________ > Callers mailing list > [email protected] > http://lists.sharedweight.net/listinfo.cgi/callers-sharedweight.net >
