Last night's square dance calling
Sep. 14th, 2005 02:54 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bjarvisYesterday evening, for the first time ever, I called an A2 tip. Whee!
Overall, it went OK. Not spectacular by any stretch, but also not a disaster. If nothing else, no dancers were injured, and I came away from the experience with a number of useful insights which will help a great deal the next time around...
1. Our Tuesday night group aren't the strongest A2 dancers around. We typically have barely enough for a single A2 square so we can't be too picky. Last night, about three were strong dancers, a couple where having problems but were clueful & warmed up quickly, and three could definitely use an A2 workshop, to put it politely. Ah, well... you work with what you have.
A couple of figures gave them heartburn so I selectively ditched my planned choreo and went with sight-calling for a limited spell to get back their confidence & flow, then went back to my notes. I'm still nervous about sight-calling the A2 material but I can add enough simple calls with Plus to work my way through it.
2. Some of the choreo I wrote & tested with CSDS turned out to be less than optimal when bodies with inertia were involved. Chalk that up to my inexperience. I'll try analyzing some of the flawed figures I used last night to see if I can more easily spot the problems on paper in future, then try redrafting them to correct the inefficiencies. In many ways, it felt like the first time I picked up a mic to try calling Mainstream: some calls go nicely together, some don't. It's a matter of experience and managing the variables.
3. I need to dumb down the choreo just a little. I was careful not to use some formations I know cause my Tuesday group issues and not to bite off more than I could chew this early in the process, but it seems I still went further than I should have. I want to push the dancers a little since I think they are dancing below their ability, but I need to remember that this is a club night, not a workshop, and they're looking to be entertained, not lectured/instructed. I can push them gently as a caller, but it has to be subtle & gradual.
I do want to push the club powers-that-be to put on an A2 workshop (or perhaps turn a club night into an A2 review). Our dancers are really very solid at Plus but we so seldom have enough dancers for an A2 session that folks are simply out of practice. It also doesn't help that I suspect their prior A2 instruction was a little less rigorous than it should have been. With the fly-in season back in full swing, there's lot of opportunities to get folks up to par in time for a particular event.
The new Mainstream class starts this Saturday, 1-5 PM, for the next eight weeks. Kent & I will be teaching about half of it. We're also calling all of club night on Sept. 27, if anyone is interested in joining us.
Overall, it went OK. Not spectacular by any stretch, but also not a disaster. If nothing else, no dancers were injured, and I came away from the experience with a number of useful insights which will help a great deal the next time around...
1. Our Tuesday night group aren't the strongest A2 dancers around. We typically have barely enough for a single A2 square so we can't be too picky. Last night, about three were strong dancers, a couple where having problems but were clueful & warmed up quickly, and three could definitely use an A2 workshop, to put it politely. Ah, well... you work with what you have.
A couple of figures gave them heartburn so I selectively ditched my planned choreo and went with sight-calling for a limited spell to get back their confidence & flow, then went back to my notes. I'm still nervous about sight-calling the A2 material but I can add enough simple calls with Plus to work my way through it.
2. Some of the choreo I wrote & tested with CSDS turned out to be less than optimal when bodies with inertia were involved. Chalk that up to my inexperience. I'll try analyzing some of the flawed figures I used last night to see if I can more easily spot the problems on paper in future, then try redrafting them to correct the inefficiencies. In many ways, it felt like the first time I picked up a mic to try calling Mainstream: some calls go nicely together, some don't. It's a matter of experience and managing the variables.
3. I need to dumb down the choreo just a little. I was careful not to use some formations I know cause my Tuesday group issues and not to bite off more than I could chew this early in the process, but it seems I still went further than I should have. I want to push the dancers a little since I think they are dancing below their ability, but I need to remember that this is a club night, not a workshop, and they're looking to be entertained, not lectured/instructed. I can push them gently as a caller, but it has to be subtle & gradual.
I do want to push the club powers-that-be to put on an A2 workshop (or perhaps turn a club night into an A2 review). Our dancers are really very solid at Plus but we so seldom have enough dancers for an A2 session that folks are simply out of practice. It also doesn't help that I suspect their prior A2 instruction was a little less rigorous than it should have been. With the fly-in season back in full swing, there's lot of opportunities to get folks up to par in time for a particular event.
The new Mainstream class starts this Saturday, 1-5 PM, for the next eight weeks. Kent & I will be teaching about half of it. We're also calling all of club night on Sept. 27, if anyone is interested in joining us.
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Date: 2005-09-14 07:45 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-09-14 07:54 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-09-14 07:59 pm (UTC)