Teaching a Plus Workshop

[bjarvis]

Tomorrow morning, kent4str and I are conducting a two hour Plus workshop for the DC Lambda Squares. At last word, we had 21 people signed up.

I'm particularly interested in working the calls "peel the top" and "spin chain the gears": in our area, those seem to be the weakest and least-used calls. Various people have asked us to work "crossfire"; while they dance it adequately, they've felt a lack of full understanding of the call.

Beyond that, we're planning on calling through the entire Plus list to look for weak spots, doing a run-through of "coordinate" and "relay the deucey," testing them on lefty or sashayed versions of calls and trying spontaneous variants of known calls (eg. "spin chain & exchange the gears but turn the star only 1/4") as time allows. Of course, we'll happily take requests & suggestions from the floor.

Any other last-minute ideas?

Comments

[excessor.livejournal.com]

Last night in our A2 class, we didn't learn any new calls because we found that many people could not do Plus calls such as Spin Chain the Gears, Peel the Top, Turn Through, Trade the Wave, All 8 Circulate, or Follow your Neighbor, or any kind of Diamond call (Circulate, Cut The, etc). It's very frustrating.

On the other hand, many callers tell dancers that when you start from x formation, you'll do this call and end up in a y formation. This goes over most new dancers' heads and isn't helpful when learning the call, although I like hearing it when we're workshopping.

[bjarvis.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I understand fully your frustration. I wince a little when an A2 or C1 square crashes because they fumble a Mainstream call --on the inside, of course 'cause doing it out loud would be ever-so-gauche. :-)

When teaching, I tend to go lightly on the speaking portion, knowing that most of it will go straight over the newbies' heads; I primarily hope that the explanation helps them remember associated chants (eg. "all 8 circulate... centers stay centers, ends stay ends"). Longer discussions are left to breaks between tips and workshops.

Another group I'm working with has problems as fundamental as basic circulates. Call "girls circulate" and the *boys* start wandering in random directions for reasons I can't even begin to fathom. *sigh* I'm hoping for an opportunity for a one hour workshop dedicated exclusively to Mainstream-level circulates.

[excessor.livejournal.com]

We do have two people in our class who cannot remember their gender for that square. We often stop a square to discover five boys in the square until someone remembers Hey, you're not a boy! It may be funny the first four hundred times, but after that, not so much.

I now say the chants out loud when we're in class. I can still hear otterpop58 teaching Swing Thru (Riiiiight, then Lefffffft) and several others. I hope I'm helping my square.

But of course, the worst is when multiple people can't Turn Left or Turn Right. Grrrrrrr.