Following this thread.
I'm in San Luis Obispo; similar situation. We've been thinking about this a
lot lately, and I think we're starting to see some good improvement.
It also sounds like at your dance, you might be having undercurrents of
divisions between newer and returning dancers. This might be what's giving
you trouble? The fact is that beginners learn best when they dance with as
many different dancers as possible, so your goal is to make it so
everyone *wants
to* dance with everyone else.
Both new dancers and returning dancers need to be motivated in different
ways. New dancers should know that they'll learn the quickest and have the
easiest time when dancing with an experienced dancer. Returning dancers
should be reminded that while it's less exciting to dance with new dancers,
the delayed reward of well-attended, intricate, energetic dances will be
worth it. The juice is worth the squeeze!
For organizers, the truth is that we can't do very much during a dance. The
caller has the most direct impact on whether people like dancing and want
to keep coming back. So as an organizer, our best things we can do involve
chatting closely with the caller about the crowd we expect and the outcomes
we're hoping for. It helps tremendously when the caller is close to the
community and knows how they dance, so mentoring new callers from within
your community sounds like it will help you with your goal. We are also
mentoring two new callers (editor's note: I'm one of them), and because new
callers need practice more than once a month, we've rustled up a few of our
more experienced dancers and met up outside of our monthly dance to
practice walkthroughs, demos, live calling, lessons, etc.
In addition, here are some of the actionable things that we have tried. Not
necessarily a magic bullet; try what you like and see what sticks.
- Two smaller breaks instead of a big one in the middle. New dancers need
more breaks. We did this for only 3-4 dances, and we've since gone back to
one break, but it seemed to be what people wanted during that time.
- Identifying some particularly *friendly, approachable* returners who are
willing to be volunteered into dancing with newbies. Let beginners know
that these people are ultra-available to dance with. ("*Maria* - you should
dance with *Claude* for this dance, they're great at teaching beginners!").
Maybe make some pins or ribbons for them to wear.
- Encourage callers to really put an emphasis on pairing new dancers with
returning dancers - both explicitly and implicitly. If there's a group of
new dancers who are only dancing with each other or throwing off a line,
let the caller know that it's okay to break them up into new lines and
encourage them to find new partners. And ask the caller to reiterate the
statements above to motivate mingling.
- Ask callers to focus on building up your group's technical skills by
calling multiple dances with the same intermediate/advanced figure.
Recently, we called three dances with hey figures just within the second
half. We were able to build up to a full hey with a ricochet, our beginners
mastered it well, and our returning dancers could satisfy their itch for
complexity and see that the whole group is improving. This one needs a
delicate touch, because focusing on one figure too much can become boring.
But I can easily imagine beginners building up to more intricate moves -
allemande & orbit, tricky wavy line moves, left diagonal chains, etc, if
the dance program is carefully thought out to build up the basics first.
- Encourage your returning dancers to help out in the ways listed above -
ask them to become the approachable helpers and make pins for them. Ask
them to show up to help callers practice and get pizza for them.
John L
On Sun, Jul 16, 2023 at 8:22 PM Sandy Seiler via Organizers <
organizers@lists.sharedweight.net> wrote:
> I am in Lawrence Kansas. Since Covid we have consistently had a larger
> number of new dancers than experienced dancers at each dance. This evening
> we had a very well attended dance with approx 70 people. I would estimate
> that at least 60-70% were inexperienced dancers. We are also in the
> process of grooming new callers and had a callers workshop in March so we
> are trying to integrate those folks in and get them more experience. I've
> seen on other posts that a dance can easily absorb about 25% beginners, but
> we have that formula pretty much flipped. We dance monthly which is a
> hindrance. Experienced dancers are fatigued of not getting to do more
> complicated dances. This has been happening for a long time and we need to
> make some changes so that we have a larger percentage of experienced
> dancers. Suggestions?
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