Wednesday Advanced Workshop

Last night was Week #5 of 9 for our ongoing Advanced square dance workshop. It turned out a little differently than the prior weeks.

This was the first night we had difficulty getting a square together. This wasn't entirely unexpected: we knew last Wednesday that many people had schedule conflicts this particular week. I should have tried drumming up angels earlier but I left it slip. Fortunately, we were able to get a square together only ten minutes into the session.

The really good part was that this was the first workshop session where the dancers asserted themselves in a significant way, requesting we drill particular calls and compare & contrast some confusing calls. Excellent! Workshops should be driven by the dancers' needs... as a caller/instructor, I just use my own agenda and ideas as a backstop if there are no questions from the floor.

With the extra drill time for minibusy, trade circulate, facing recycle, diamond chain thru, square chain thru and scoot chain thru, we didn't get to all of the calls I had scheduled for this session. I had originally hoped to get through switch to a diamond, fractional tops and one other call which escapes me at the moment, but we'll fit those into the schedule in future weeks.

Wednesday Advanced Workshop

Last night was Week #5 of 9 for our ongoing Advanced square dance workshop. It turned out a little differently than the prior weeks.

This was the first night we had difficulty getting a square together. This wasn't entirely unexpected: we knew last Wednesday that many people had schedule conflicts this particular week. I should have tried drumming up angels earlier but I left it slip. Fortunately, we were able to get a square together only ten minutes into the session.

The really good part was that this was the first workshop session where the dancers asserted themselves in a significant way, requesting we drill particular calls and compare & contrast some confusing calls. Excellent! Workshops should be driven by the dancers' needs... as a caller/instructor, I just use my own agenda and ideas as a backstop if there are no questions from the floor.

With the extra drill time for minibusy, trade circulate, facing recycle, diamond chain thru, square chain thru and scoot chain thru, we didn't get to all of the calls I had scheduled for this session. I had originally hoped to get through switch to a diamond, fractional tops and one other call which escapes me at the moment, but we'll fit those into the schedule in future weeks.