Teaching a Square Dance Class

The Chesapeake Squares are hosting a Mainstream square dance class this weekend. caller_dayle, kent4str and I are teaching the entire Mainstream list (68 calls, plus variations) in four 3-hour blocks: Friday night, Saturday morning, Saturday evening and Sunday afternoon.

Tonight, kent4str and I taught the first block and it went pretty well.

It's a small class of five students. That makes for a very personalized calling experience. Further, right out of the starting gate, we learned that four of the newbies had square danced previously, one nearly through the A2 level in years prior. For a few minutes, it looked like this would be the shortest class ever, but then the late fifth dancer arrived and he had no prior dance experience at all so we were back to the original game plan.

Tonight, we covered the first 17 calls on the official teaching order, along with a few extras (#23 grand square, #26 walk around the corner, #27 see saw). While I think I could have pushed for more, I didn't want to overwhelm them all in the first session. Further, most of the remaining calls involved introducing additional formations, calls to get them into position and some extra calls to smoothly get them out again. Introducing lines, waves or columns at this point would have been too much.

With the calls we had on hand, we covered a lot of ground, exercising them in standard applications as well as left-handed versions and sashayed positions. Only our complete newbie had any sort of difficulty but even that was largely remembering which direction was left and which was right in the heat of battle, the same sort of growing pains everyone goes through at some point in their square dancing career.

caller_dayle will have them tomorrow and we'll all jointly finish up on Sunday. We'll be using the next number of club nights to rehearse non-standard applications as well as a laundry list of flourishes.

More as the weekend goes on.

Teaching a Square Dance Class

The Chesapeake Squares are hosting a Mainstream square dance class this weekend. caller_dayle, kent4str and I are teaching the entire Mainstream list (68 calls, plus variations) in four 3-hour blocks: Friday night, Saturday morning, Saturday evening and Sunday afternoon.

Tonight, kent4str and I taught the first block and it went pretty well.

It's a small class of five students. That makes for a very personalized calling experience. Further, right out of the starting gate, we learned that four of the newbies had square danced previously, one nearly through the A2 level in years prior. For a few minutes, it looked like this would be the shortest class ever, but then the late fifth dancer arrived and he had no prior dance experience at all so we were back to the original game plan.

Tonight, we covered the first 17 calls on the official teaching order, along with a few extras (#23 grand square, #26 walk around the corner, #27 see saw). While I think I could have pushed for more, I didn't want to overwhelm them all in the first session. Further, most of the remaining calls involved introducing additional formations, calls to get them into position and some extra calls to smoothly get them out again. Introducing lines, waves or columns at this point would have been too much.

With the calls we had on hand, we covered a lot of ground, exercising them in standard applications as well as left-handed versions and sashayed positions. Only our complete newbie had any sort of difficulty but even that was largely remembering which direction was left and which was right in the heat of battle, the same sort of growing pains everyone goes through at some point in their square dancing career.

caller_dayle will have them tomorrow and we'll all jointly finish up on Sunday. We'll be using the next number of club nights to rehearse non-standard applications as well as a laundry list of flourishes.

More as the weekend goes on.