Advanced & Challenge Callers

[bjarvis]

One of my long-range headaches projects is planning towards our advanced & challenge fly-in (ACDC) for 2007 through 2010. Building attendance for this event in particular is something I've been obsessing on for a while and now that we've finished our MS-C1 fly-in for another calendar year, I'm shifting focus back to ACDC.

One of the big factors which will (hopefully) draw dancers to the event will be the array of callers. For ACDC, we typically have three full-time callers doing A2 through C4, with one part-time caller handling A2 through C1 or C2. So my question:
What caller would you be willing to fly across the continent to dance to?

In prior years, we've been using Ett McAtee, Linda Kendall, Saundra Bryant, Anne Uebelacker, Mike Jacobs, Barry Clasper, Geo Jedlicka, Ben Rubright & Vic Ceder, among others. This year, we feature John Sybalsky, Ett McAtee, Ben Rubright and Betsy Gotta.

Any recommendations of others who call to C4 and would draw some crowds?

Comments

[trulygrateful.livejournal.com]

While part of the attraction may be the the caller staff, there is also the financial situation which plays a big part, at least for me, and is something which remains unfortunately unpredictable.

Sure, I'd love to fly across country (if I were living back home in California) to dance with Ben Rubright... however, whether or not I could afford the plane ticket, parking, hotel and dance fees for just a weekend is another subject altogether.

With that said... Anne, Ben and Betsy, for me, will always make me want to come and dance, whenever the situation allows me.

Conversely, there are callers who just do not "inspire" me to want to make any trip, even within my own city - and certainly I am not unanimous in that feeling. If DCLS continues on with the four-caller system, for me, there needs to be at least two that would make me want to be there in order to get me to come (though 2005 was the first one I missed).

So one thing you may want to consider is not necessarily trying new callers (though it can't hurt), but rather new combinations of callers who have previously called there -- and therein may be some solution, possibly.

I hope this helps, if even a bit.

[bjarvis.livejournal.com]

Yeah, membership in the cult doesn't come cheap. Don't get me started on IAGSDC conventions.

New combinations of callers is gradually becoming difficult as we've worked with such a small pool for several years; we'll run out of combinations soon enough if we don't add a couple more to the mix. I'm at somewhat of a disadvantage however since I don't dance at the C levels currently so I'm not routinely exposed to callers at that level, or competent to say which ones shine, hence my inquiries.

Thanks for the input!

[allanh.livejournal.com]

Unfortunately, the most obvious candidates for higher-level calling, mostly live on the West Coast. You've already got John Sybalasky. Some others to consider: Michael Kellogg, Bronc Wise, Rob French, and CJ Smith.

[billeyler.livejournal.com]

We have some challenges along those ends, too. Although we're not hosting an A&C weekend, we've just confirmed that Vic Ceder is calling for our fly-in Oct 13-15 06 (as well as Kris and me). The intriguing part of this is that he's also calling for the Albuquerque Balloon Fiesta (str8) A&C weekend Oct 6-8, so he'll be vacationing in our land of enchantment for some of that period.

Although we absolutely don't want to slight the San Diego West Coast A&C weekend, Kris and I are hoping to promote the (str8) A&C weekend before ours...numbers have dwindled mightly over the years as people have moved on to other activities. This year this A&C did have a couple of C2 sessions, but last year there weren't any.

So we'll see what shakes out of this here out west.