"at least 60-70% were inexperienced dancers"
Has this been a mostly overlapping group of new dancers coming back each
month, or are they mostly people who come once or twice?
Jeff
On Mon, Jul 17, 2023 at 1:46 AM John Little via Organizers <
organizers@lists.sharedweight.net> wrote:
> 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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