DC Mainstream Class, Week #5

[bjarvis]

Last night's class was surprisingly productive. My initial plan was to give the newbies a break, give them only a couple of new calls and spend the balance of the class reviewing and drilling prior calls, especially "square thru" just introduced last week. Not needed.

While we took a few extra minutes to study "do paso" and "partner trade" (couples only), they remembered and danced almost all of the prior calls perfectly, including "square thru."

This week, we introduced the dancers to waves and columns, including calls "touch 1/4," "run" and "step to a wave." We expanded on the call "trade," giving them partner trade from mini-waves and centers trade & ends trade in ocean waves but we didn't give them couples trade quite yet --that will wait for another session. They also quickly picked up on circulate: centers/ends circulate, boys circulate, girls circulate, all eight circulate, couples circulate, column circulate, etc.. By design, we didn't introduce split circulate: again, that will come up in a couple of weeks.

BTW, we had two special guests for the warm-up tip: apparentparadox and Mark stopped by to say hi and offer (im)moral support. We haven't seen them since the convention in July... I wish we had more time to schmooze.

Comments

[bearfuz.livejournal.com]

No problem with wave lead centers Circulating and having to turn over their left shoulders, eh? That's great. One of my worst tips at a Convention (not that I ever had that many) was plagued by centers not knowing how to Circulate, and I had a singing call that depended on that. :-S

[bjarvis.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I was expecting issues with some of the circulate patterns, but they took to it immediately in all variations we threw at them. Expecting confusion, we've held off split circulate: I expect that when we introduce that, they're response & success rates will slow a bit.

[tdjohnsn.livejournal.com]

Harumph.

I'm jealous. Our classes are doing okay, but half the students seem to need to take a week or two off at a time then come back and just "pick things up" when they return. and of course with the "Caller who can't be named" calling half the classes only they are only really picking up the calls that Ron teaches anyway.

Huh. I guess -I'm- the grumpy one today.

Ahhh...

[kent4str.livejournal.com]

Then all is right with the world.

[bjarvis.livejournal.com]

Our newbies have had excellent attendance overall. While a couple of folks have missed some classes, they've caught up very quickly every time. I couldn't ask for a better bunch!