I agree with Jim. As a dancer, I've danced through a fair number of
bouts of caller confusion. My two cents: What seems to me to work best
is for the caller to know at least one point in each dance that we might
call an anchor point. "Oops, I slipped up there. Find your partner and
swing on the side." Or something, preferably with their partners
because if they are lost they probably don't know who their neighbors
are at the moment. From that point, tell them to wait for the music,
then continue from there. Waiting is easier than responding to hash
calling, especially unexpected hash calling.
Dave Harding
On 9/21/2019 10:01 PM, jim saxe via Callers wrote:
Becky,
I may be off-base about this, and I'd welcome differing opinions from other
list members, especially if they're based on actual experience, but I expect
you would find some dancers who seemed *amazingly* resistant to dancing a
hash-called recovery routine of the sort that you describe. It's just not the
sort of thing contra dancers are trained to expect.
Some of the dancers who can most easily remember how the dance was supposed to go (if you
hadn't muffed a call and sent things of the rails) will want to continue doing what they
"know" they're supposed to do and try to help their partners and neighbors to
do the same. Unless they think you're going into a contra medley, they may think the
calls for your attempted recovery routine are just more mistakes.
The least skilled dancers--the ones who are most dependent on the surrounding dancers to get them through the pattern of a
dance--may just have their brains totally full of stuff like "Uh-oh! Something feels wrong! I'm confused! What's going on
here? It's probably my fault! Oh, dear; oh, dear; oh dear!" and not have any attention left over for listening to your
calls. And if they do try to listen, they might expect that you are attempting to tell them how to do the dance they've just been
doing (as opposed to the improvised thing you're actually calling) and they may be surprised that what you say isn't putting them
into a familiar place. And if they do get to a place that seems familiar, they might next try to do the thing they have been
habituated to do when they get to that familiar place, even if it's not what you call at that point, and even if doing that
habitual thing won't help them recover because they're at the "familiar" place 8 or 12 bars later than they would have
been there in the original dance. Moreover, those less skilled dancers may also have "experienced" dancers nearby
trying to "help" them do whatever those experienced dancers "know" should come next, which, as I said earlier
may not be your recovery routine.
If the dance is fairly straightforward, with no out-of-minor-set interactions (so that, for
example, there are no interactions with "shadows" and you don't temporarily progress to
new neighbors then revisit previous neighbors before progressing for good) a possible recovery
method would be to admit that you goofed and then, as the end of the tune approaches say something
like "OK. Just look for your next neighbor somehow. WAIT for the music. ... Ready ... set
... Balance and swing" (or some other appropriate thing if the dance begins a different way).
Then you may still have to deal with couples that somehow get stranded between two foursomes. The usual rule
in this case is that the stranded couples should go to the bottom of their set. If they don't know to do
that on their own, you could tell them: "If you're left out, go to the bottom" or "If you
don't have another couple to dance with, go to the bottom" or "Left-over couples, just go the end
of the line." And they might do it. Or they might react as if somebody had just turned off your
microphone and erected an inch-thick plexiglas wall in front of the stage.
There might also be some people who have found a new neighbor to start the next
round of the dance but who are somehow in a different foursome from their
partner. If they can't sort that out on their own, I can't think of anything
the caller can say over the mic that will help, short of bringing the dance to
a stop and getting everyone to regroup.
Here's a story that comes to mind, not about a recovery routine but about a different attempt to get dancers to do something on
the fly that I hadn't explicitly taught during the walk-through: I was calling to a small group of mixed-skilled (but on average
not very skilled) dancers in small city a few hours away from the nearest "hot" contra dance scene and for some reason
I had just picked a dance in which only the #1 couples go down the hall and return. I guess I hadn't taught the role of the #2
dancers in maintaining the position of the set, and I saw that the sets were stretching and drifting further down the hall with
each repeat. So next time I sent the 1s down the hall, I said something like "2s move up". No effect. Hmm. Maybe the
2s weren't used to identifying themselves as such. So next time after sending couple 1 down the hall, I tried something like
"The rest of you, take a step up." No effect. Maybe they weren't used to interpreting "up" in that context.
So ... "Couple one go down the hall. [Loudly and clearly:] The rest of you take a step or two toward the stage." I
might as well have been whispering into my sleeve. I'm not sure even one person got the message. So I just let the dance run a
few more times, drifting gradually down the hall until I decided to end it. As I said: Completely unexpected call == Mic off;
plexiglas wall up.
--Jim
On Sep 21, 2019, at 5:11 PM, Becky Liddle via Callers
<callers@lists.sharedweight.net> wrote:
I’m a very new caller. I do pretty well, but occasionally I’ve lost my place in
a dance and the dancers (of course) crash.
I won’t always be able to avoid a crash, but would like to avoid the complete
crash and burn. That is, I’d like to be able to recover after I mess up, so the
dancers can finish the dance. My tentative plan is below, but I’m making it up,
and would love both feedback on my plan and/or other suggested methods of
rescuing a dance that has gone off the rails:
I’m pretty good at knowing where we are in the music, so if I can maintain my
head I’m hoping I'd be able to do an extremely simple hash call to get back to
the top of the song:
I’m guessing what I’d do is say “find your partner and swing on the side” and
then hash calls that amount to going nowhere (Circle or star all the way
around, LL forward and back, neighbour do-si-do, partner allemande once
around—others?) until 8 bars before the top of the dance (if it’s improper),
then say “circle left 3 places” to get them back in the original hands-four
position. Then start calling the dance at the top. Does that work? Is there
some other approach you’d recommend instead?
And if it is a Becket dance, I just do the same thing but without the circle
left ¾ bit at the end?
Are there other tips you have for recovering and/or for killing time waiting
for the music to start over again?
Any other recommendations to keep everyone in a good mood if/when I mess up?
Good self-deprecating jokes/comments?
Thanks!
Becky
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