Amateur Night

There's nothing quite like stretching one's abilities to (re-)learn humility.

I called square dancing for last night's DC Lambda Squares' club night. It was ostensibly a Mainstream & Plus night but we had no Mainstream dancers is it was all Plus all night long. That wasn't a big issue: I sight-call Mainstream & Plus fairly well and regularly. I was, however, attempting a few extra features...

For starters, I wanted to call with better musical phrasing and, in particular, giving the first beat in a musical phrase to the dancers. It's pretty hard with modern square dancing since relatively few calls take precisely 4 or 8 beats to execute, but there's no reason at all we can't have the dancers start a new figure on the first beat, especially in the singing calls.

I thought I did OK on this while singing to myself in the car the past few weeks while driving to & from work. Not so much on stage. It turned out to be vastly harder with live dancers than I ever anticipated. I suspect I'm using more mental bandwidth to visually manage the squares in a flowing sequence so there's little left for this new layer of floor management; I also suspect I'm letting the floor set the speed & pacing rather than nudging them a little to tighter formations and more timely execution. In any case, my noble experiment clearly indicated I have a long way to go.

My other big experiment was working a little more with six couple dancing (six-pack formation rather than hexagons). As it happened, I had 13 dancers for the bulk of the evening thanks to ugly traffic and uglier weather so grabbing 12 dancers for this tip allowed me to keep the floor as full as possible.

Most of my new six-pack choreo worked well, especially the Plus figures. Two figures stumbled: I have to dig a little further to determine where & what went wrong with those. The bigger problem was that my brain simply isn't equipped to sight-resolve twelve dancers in a square when things to south. I can easily resolve eight dancers, but twelve? Total meltdown! In an instant, I felt like a rank amateur again.

I am going to fix this problem though. When I started calling, I created a list of modules for every level I was calling, with sub-headings of "zero box get-out," "zero line get-out," etc.. I'm now creating a new set for six-pack calling. Get-outs for eight dancers don't always work for twelve but I can start by testing each one with checkers and CSDS; memorizing resolutions which work well for both will save me a lot of effort in the long run.

And I need to compose singing calls for twelve dancers. That shouldn't be overly difficult in theory but perhaps its more of a minefield than I suspect.

And I'm learning how to train CSDS to do new calls & positions. It has some basic functionality for six-pack dancing but only a little: it needs a lot of help with even basic calls. For example, it understands 'triple pass thru' well enough but it chokes on 'first couple go left, next go right, third partner trade'. At least, it did before I showed it what I wanted.

As for spending more time singing the square dance calls rather than just the tag lines, I was vastly more successful than I have been previously. That practice has paid off handsomely and I definitely think it showed on the floor.

It was, in all, a very successful evening and I'm sure the dancers had fun. Even when I didn't meet my personal goals on some items, I learned plenty and wasn't any worse than my normal level of calling. I think it was billeyler who told me years ago that a little nervousness in each performance is probably a good thing as it keeps us on our toes and reaching for improvement. Last night's reminder is a valuable lesson in humility.

In other square dance news, I've registered for a two-day caller seminar in Alexandria, VA, Sept 1-2 with caller coaches Mike Callahan, Tom Miller, Ken Ritucci and Butch Adams. Deborah Carroll-Jones is coming to the greater DC area in September 26 for a NCASDLA booster dance and is hosting a 2 hour caller clinic/seminar 3-5pm that same day; barring scheduling conflicts, I'm planning to attend. And I've just mailed off our pre-registrations for CALLERLAB's 2011 convention in Las Vegas next April. Woo hoo!

Amateur Night

There's nothing quite like stretching one's abilities to (re-)learn humility.

I called square dancing for last night's DC Lambda Squares' club night. It was ostensibly a Mainstream & Plus night but we had no Mainstream dancers is it was all Plus all night long. That wasn't a big issue: I sight-call Mainstream & Plus fairly well and regularly. I was, however, attempting a few extra features...

For starters, I wanted to call with better musical phrasing and, in particular, giving the first beat in a musical phrase to the dancers. It's pretty hard with modern square dancing since relatively few calls take precisely 4 or 8 beats to execute, but there's no reason at all we can't have the dancers start a new figure on the first beat, especially in the singing calls.

I thought I did OK on this while singing to myself in the car the past few weeks while driving to & from work. Not so much on stage. It turned out to be vastly harder with live dancers than I ever anticipated. I suspect I'm using more mental bandwidth to visually manage the squares in a flowing sequence so there's little left for this new layer of floor management; I also suspect I'm letting the floor set the speed & pacing rather than nudging them a little to tighter formations and more timely execution. In any case, my noble experiment clearly indicated I have a long way to go.

My other big experiment was working a little more with six couple dancing (six-pack formation rather than hexagons). As it happened, I had 13 dancers for the bulk of the evening thanks to ugly traffic and uglier weather so grabbing 12 dancers for this tip allowed me to keep the floor as full as possible.

Most of my new six-pack choreo worked well, especially the Plus figures. Two figures stumbled: I have to dig a little further to determine where & what went wrong with those. The bigger problem was that my brain simply isn't equipped to sight-resolve twelve dancers in a square when things to south. I can easily resolve eight dancers, but twelve? Total meltdown! In an instant, I felt like a rank amateur again.

I am going to fix this problem though. When I started calling, I created a list of modules for every level I was calling, with sub-headings of "zero box get-out," "zero line get-out," etc.. I'm now creating a new set for six-pack calling. Get-outs for eight dancers don't always work for twelve but I can start by testing each one with checkers and CSDS; memorizing resolutions which work well for both will save me a lot of effort in the long run.

And I need to compose singing calls for twelve dancers. That shouldn't be overly difficult in theory but perhaps its more of a minefield than I suspect.

And I'm learning how to train CSDS to do new calls & positions. It has some basic functionality for six-pack dancing but only a little: it needs a lot of help with even basic calls. For example, it understands 'triple pass thru' well enough but it chokes on 'first couple go left, next go right, third partner trade'. At least, it did before I showed it what I wanted.

As for spending more time singing the square dance calls rather than just the tag lines, I was vastly more successful than I have been previously. That practice has paid off handsomely and I definitely think it showed on the floor.

It was, in all, a very successful evening and I'm sure the dancers had fun. Even when I didn't meet my personal goals on some items, I learned plenty and wasn't any worse than my normal level of calling. I think it was billeyler who told me years ago that a little nervousness in each performance is probably a good thing as it keeps us on our toes and reaching for improvement. Last night's reminder is a valuable lesson in humility.

In other square dance news, I've registered for a two-day caller seminar in Alexandria, VA, Sept 1-2 with caller coaches Mike Callahan, Tom Miller, Ken Ritucci and Butch Adams. Deborah Carroll-Jones is coming to the greater DC area in September 26 for a NCASDLA booster dance and is hosting a 2 hour caller clinic/seminar 3-5pm that same day; barring scheduling conflicts, I'm planning to attend. And I've just mailed off our pre-registrations for CALLERLAB's 2011 convention in Las Vegas next April. Woo hoo!