The Nine Stages of Becoming a Caller

1. "I really don't want to call. I just want to dance."
2. "I'd like to be able to call, but I just couldn't get up there and do it."
3. "Hey, that was fun!"
4. "I just called my first dance!"
5. "I just called half an evening!"
6. "I just called a whole dance. Thank goodness they knew what they were doing!"
7. "I called an evening where twenty new people show up in a group after the workshop was over!"
8. "I just called a wedding!"
9. "I only call if I get paid for it."

Calling Party Wednesday, September 26

Again, a good time was had by all. We invented many new "progressions" besides having the first couple run down the line to be the second couple...

Everyone got a chance to call - Bob and David and Larry and Kay and Chrystal and Martha. Kay and Chrystal had tales to tell of their calling at the last St Louis English Country Dance, and Larry told us about his demo of Youth Contradancing at the Lindy Hop Dance last week.

David gets the Most Improved Since Last Week award, and I got the Most in Need of Help This Week award.

Our most interesting puzzle was helping Kay figure out why people get confused with Colin Hume's dance "St Louis." It's a really wonderful dance when you know it cold, but although Kay herself knows it really well, and explains it clearly, there are just a couple of points at which dancers who aren't listening closely can make wrong assumptions, and, well, screw it up royally. We thought some of it might be because the A part is so simple - basically forward and back, a cast and a two hand turn -- followed by a fiendish B part. Lulled into satisfaction, you can't believe you are suddenly crashing and burning. But I think we identified the main points at which people's usual "half listening" causes them to become confused.

The next calling party is next Tuesday, October 2.

M
E

Calling Party Tuesday September 18, 2007

Another successful evening! Again, we were a small but mighty group: Kay, David, Judy P, Bob, Martha, Sue, and Chrystal. Everyone, EVERYONE, (okay, except Bob, who was attending an online class in the other room at the same time) called a dance!

We did a grand mixture of Contra and English, we Contra folks struggling sometimes to learn "English as a Second Language", but agreeing that English dances are "just as fun".

We learned the difficulties of dancing twice through a dance with just four dancers, but there was much laughter and, um, inventive choreography while we tried.

When and How to Call the Moves
For me, the most interesting conversation was the one about When and How to call the moves. I keep saying that you need to figure out just what words are the important ones (the who what where words) and to plan exactly which beat of the music you're going to say them on, usually the strongest musical point before the move, which is beat 5 (out of 8) for a four-count call, or beat 5 or 7 for a two-count call.

JudyP, rather reasonably, asked for a less left-brained approach, and in the ensuing conversation, my take on what emerged is this: Deedling the music may be more effective than counting (it doesn't matter if you deedle on pitch, just so the rhythm is suggestive of the tune that will be played) and that it does really matter how you use your voice. Sue offered the observation that you should speak smoothly if you want the dancers to dance smoothly, speak emphatically if you want them to dance with punch, and if it matters to you that the dancers dance on time to the music, call the moves in time to the music.

If others recall the conversation differently, please add your views!

Caller Hubris
I'm hoping Eric will share his marvelous story of caller hubris and the crashing and burning it can cause. (BTW, I wasn't at the event he described, but others who were there do not remember any crashing or burning -- perhaps a small fender-bender.) The aftermath can be hard to bear, but I think we all experienced the blessings of his speedy recovery on Sunday, when he called a bunch of interesting (read unusual, therefore HARD) dances really well.

I shared the outlines of the story with Ted, who said "Oh yeah, I remember going through that." It would be great if of the experienced callers would tell us their similar cautionary tales about the need for continued preparation and practice even (and especially) at the point that we begin to feel pretty jaunty about our own calling.

How Long is Too Long?
We also talked about the length of dances - how long to let them run. Some people have noticed that callers sometimes let dances run a tad long. So, we asked ourselves, just how long should a single dance be?

I offered a friend's observation that her husband, a wonderful caller, always ran the dances about 17 times. He denies doing any counting of the times through at all, but she says they nearly always come out that long anyway.

Apparently, some callers look at the active couple in the longest line, and stop the dance when that couple had made it all the way down the line and back up. We also noted that if the lines are really short, or extra long, that might not work.

I will also say that, if you're calling to a New England style band that plays medleys, and the band has just changed to the third (and hottest) tune, if you try to stop them, they'll beg for more times through. (Some bands have been known to just keep playing. Cheeky bastards.)

Thanks
I don't know how the rest of you felt, but I especially enjoyed last night. We had the chance to work on difficulties, both personal and choreographic, and we had the chance to dance some interesting dances. This is exactly what I hoped would happen when we got together!

Roger and Me

Roger Diggle's pretty much a star now. But you knew that. He comes in, fairly big and shaggy these days, looking intense but behaving gently. He called a dance I was playing with Stringdancer in Minneapolis. There were well over 100 dancers there, and the beginner class beforehand had about thirty or forty people in it, with very few ringers. Ouch! But he handled it really well, except for one problem at the beginning.

The beginners didn't quite get broken up and spread around before the first dance, so the first dance was rocky (just in their line). I think it would be interesting to discuss what we think we should do if we found ourselves in that situation. Forty newcomers, right in the middle of the hall, and a bunch of experienced dancers at the bottom and sides, already lined up and ready to go.

Hmmm...

I found out that Roger's dance "Roll in the Hey" was NOT made up to teach beginners a hey, as I've always thought. He just wondered what would happen if you came out of a hey into a circle left. He was testing just that move with some folks, and made up the quickest dance he could think of to fill in before the move - and was pretty surprised when it got popular. These days it's almost always on people's Greatest Hits list.

It's funny. Roger's become such a legend (the dancewriting, the calling, the whistling, the late night whistling-calling-guitarplaying) that I actually felt a little like I was around royalty or something. I mean, I didn't say "Yes, your majesty" or anything, but there was a little self-conscious shyness that crept in.

M
E

Calling Party September 12, 2007

7:00pm, Kay's House. Email me if you need directions.

Come to dance. Come to call. Come to talk about dancing and calling.

M
E

Calling ADDance

Once about a year ago when I got home from work I found in my mailbox one of those promotional videos addressed to me about adult ADD. One of my 4 roommates(maybe all of them) thought it was a good joke--sort of. My roommates used to call me ADD girl. Why you may ask am I writing about ADD on the Callers' Blog. OK, so--ADD and calling.

Observation: Calling is to dancers like driving is to car. If I get distracted by one thing--even if that thing was myself--suddenly it's the sound of tires in the gravel. So, there I was staring down the set at some very patient people who suddenly put their trust in me to set them in motion with out crashing them into each other. Can I just say that standing in front of a room of rowdy teenagers is easier than staring down the set at all of you. Maybe it is because you are actually listening. Hmmm....anyway--I felt like a couple of times I was distracted by something around me and I sort of let go of the steering wheel--forgot something or was late. I really have to keep going because-duh Chrystal-the music keeps going. Other wise its tires on the rumble strip for everyone.

Anyway...it was fun times on Tuesday. I was actually quite terrified to give calling a try but now that I have had a go at it I am looking forward to trying again. Feedback? Observations?

I set before you my novice but honest reflections,
~chrystal

An afterthought:
I definitely do not recommend dancing the first time one tries calling.

Calling Party on September 4

Another fun time! I got home a little late from teaching, but Bob had done a great job of hosting the party, and everything was in full, uh, swing, when I got there. Bob's dance XYZ looked like it is ready for prime time. Wade called - Mr. Quiet turns out to be a good caller...give a guy a microphone and watch out!

I think I'm just about ready to try calling my one English dance in public. I've finally practiced it enough (on my walks, in the car)to be able to remember it, mostly. I worked on reducing the number of syllables I say (ala Bruce Hamilton) by saying, for instance "First man and second lady cast around the others" instead of "First man cast down around the second man and second lady cast up around the first lady."

Chrystal called an updated version of "Female Saylor" which we want to call "Chrystal Saylor". It worked great. I played the tune, which sounds like the Christmas carol "Master in the Hall". We were short just one dancer, so Chrystal called while dancing. Talented, that's what she is...

Kay called a contra with some very interesting bits in it. Drat, I can't remember the name of it. The hey started from the middle - and we learned that it's a dance best done to music that isn't super fast. We then tried out various versions of the ricochet hey that the trad-callers list was discussing last week.

Good group, this one: Eric and Wade and Bob and Lyndon and Reida and Gitry and Kay and Chrystal and I - the requisite nine!

Next week, Wednesday at Kay's house!

M
E

Welcome to Judy and Weekend Observations

Welcome Judy! JudyB became our fifteenth dance-caller-blogger last week!

Over the weekend, Chicory played a dance Champaign-Urbana with Bill Sudkamp, a fine caller from Chicago. Bill has been calling for umpteen years, and has a reputation as an excellent square dance caller (in addition to being a good contra caller) and frankly, I was a bit worried that he wouldn't like us all that much because he really likes old-time music, and my bands mostly play in a kind of New England, contra fusion style.

But I made friends with him at Kimmswick, when he looked over at Stringdancer and said "Oh, I guess I should call a contra," and I said "We can play old time square dance music, you know. We can even play fast." He grinned and said "Okay, then." We played so fast that I'm still getting complaints from dancers several months after the dance, but Bill was happy, so we were happy too.

This time he said (with a twinkle), "You don't have to play quite that fast..."

Bill was smart. He figured out that he could call a "Chestnut" and a strange but fun five-part dance because, as long as we have the written music, the band can play just about anything. The Chestnut was "Chorus Jig," famous for being neither a chorus nor a jig (and for being one of the first dances to use contra corners), and the five part dance had 80 counts instead of the usual 64!