Plus Workshop

[bjarvis]

Today's Plus workshop went swimmingly. Indeed, it's hard to imagine going better.

In all, we had three squares (barely) on the floor; kent4str and I took turns dancing to ensure we had a third square as long as we could.

We brought a white board with markers so dancers could add their own ideas to the workshop list. We already had the entire 'spin' family (spin the top, all 8 spin the top, spin chain thru, spin chain the gears, spin chain & exchange the gears), 'peel off,' 'peel the top' and 'crossfire.' Dancers added 'load the f***ing boat,' 'chase right,' 'coordinate' and 'relay the deucey.'

I actually started the workshop with a thorough look at 'acey deucey,' largely to test the floor and establish to them my expectations. We tackled it from every position available: waves (lefty & righty), two-faced lines (lefty & righty), lines facing in & out, inverted lines, thar stars (righty & lefty) and such.

The thar stars were a useful segue into 'all 8 spin the top.' As a club, we do 'peel off' fairly well so I used it to reinforce the peel movement and then move on to 'peel the top.'

Technically, the workshop was 2.5 hours but since folks really wanted to address 'relay the deucey,' we stayed for an additional half-hour to cover as much as we could albeit down to two squares. I had hoped for enough time to do a left-handed 'relay the deucey,' but we did pretty well nonetheless.

There was some small chatter about an Advanced workshop before the upcoming IAGSDC convention... I'm looking forward to the possibility!

Comments

[jss]

Alas, "peel the top" doesn't make me think about dancing.

[canseefour.livejournal.com]

I actually started the workshop with a thorough look at 'acey deucey,' largely to test the floor and establish to them my expectations. We tackled it from every position available: waves (lefty & righty), two-faced lines (lefty & righty), lines facing in & out, inverted lines, thar stars (righty & lefty) and such.

How about from diamonds?

[bjarvis.livejournal.com]

Nope, we intentionally left that off... if time allowed, we were going to do a whole block on diamonds, inc. point-to-point, facing, 3-1 and such. I had a note to do acey-deucey in diamonds.

Oh, for one more hour! Still, their heads were pretty full so it was probably for the better that we stopped when we did.

[canseefour.livejournal.com]

If you give them too much at once, you can actually see the overload - sometimes people can barely remember their own name!

[bjarvis.livejournal.com]

So true... I've felt it myself many times before.

I figure when approximately 20% of the floor are showing signs of maxing out, it's time for at least an extended break, if not calling it a day. Less than that, I fear short-changing the floor.

[bearfuz.livejournal.com]

Like, say, at about 9:30 p.m. in Geo's basement. You can almost hear the clicks as brain after brain shuts down, including mine.