Last Night's C1 Square Dancing
Oct. 9th, 2007 09:09 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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justetthon at her Ettseteras C1 dance in College Park, MD, last night. In all, I call it a success and some of my best upper level calling to date.
We had two full squares on the floor at all times, with two couples sitting out. I had a short struggle with the couples rotation application on my laptop: I use it so infrequently that it took me a minute to figure out how to generate the first tip. Doh!
Nearly all of my material was well received. Most figures were successful, judging by happy sounds from the floor. Out of 42 figures called, four figures in my "easy" stack will be moved up to "medium", two figures will be amended slightly for clarity and one will be rewritten completely.
I think my biggest issue of the night was simply letting the tips go on too long. I'll have to set the tip timer in my software to be a bit more aggressive in its alerts; for the most part, it was cues from the floor which guided break times.
Each time I call, I learn something new. This time, I was caught by surprise by the particularly enthusiastic cheering for figures which end with all dancers back in their home positions without use of promenading, right & left grand or allemande left. I don't know why I didn't notice that previously and I suspect overuse might take the shine off it, but I'll experiment using that for the confidence-building first couple of figures in the evening next time up.
Addendum:
Checking my notes, I just recalled one other oddity of the evening: the dancers really didn't like "switch the line." Off hand, I have no idea (yet) why that call gets a thumbs-down while "switch the wave" is acceptable, but I'll examine my use of it last night to see if there was perhaps a flow issue.
justetthon at her Ettseteras C1 dance in College Park, MD, last night. In all, I call it a success and some of my best upper level calling to date.We had two full squares on the floor at all times, with two couples sitting out. I had a short struggle with the couples rotation application on my laptop: I use it so infrequently that it took me a minute to figure out how to generate the first tip. Doh!
Nearly all of my material was well received. Most figures were successful, judging by happy sounds from the floor. Out of 42 figures called, four figures in my "easy" stack will be moved up to "medium", two figures will be amended slightly for clarity and one will be rewritten completely.
I think my biggest issue of the night was simply letting the tips go on too long. I'll have to set the tip timer in my software to be a bit more aggressive in its alerts; for the most part, it was cues from the floor which guided break times.
Each time I call, I learn something new. This time, I was caught by surprise by the particularly enthusiastic cheering for figures which end with all dancers back in their home positions without use of promenading, right & left grand or allemande left. I don't know why I didn't notice that previously and I suspect overuse might take the shine off it, but I'll experiment using that for the confidence-building first couple of figures in the evening next time up.
Addendum:
Checking my notes, I just recalled one other oddity of the evening: the dancers really didn't like "switch the line." Off hand, I have no idea (yet) why that call gets a thumbs-down while "switch the wave" is acceptable, but I'll examine my use of it last night to see if there was perhaps a flow issue.
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Date: 2007-10-10 12:29 am (UTC)And he figured out so many different ways to leave dancers at or near home that the dancers were ALWAYS delighted. It didn't get old at all.
I wonder what calling performance quirk I'm known for? Probably my habit of listening too closely to the dancers and responding to their comments on-mic. ("YOU heard us say THAT?" "Uh-huh. Now if you can talk AND dance at the same time, I'd be even more impressed.")