Well, I pretty much blew our nearly-perfect record tonight. "Let's see..." I'm thinking. "No new people in the crowd. I'd better not bore them with my patiently crafted, efficient-but-complete explanations. Just get on with it." The only problem was that I actually LEFT OUT not one, but TWO of the moves of Portsmouth, and neglected to point out that if there are two couples at the bottom in a triple minor, they should dance with a ghost. So much for my strangely obsessive research into the subject.
If I were a baseball player, I would have had a good night. Batting .500 is, after all, a good thing. The Hay Makers, which I was actually more worried about, went fine. Too bad I'm not a baseball player, however, so have to face the fact that I screwed up half of the dances I called.
Kay is beginning to make St Louis into an easy dance. (There was a discussion recently on the trad_callers list recently that seemed to arrive at the thought that there are no hard dances, only badly-called ones, that to a really good caller, there are no hard dances.)
Missy and Mark called the rest of the dances, and did a wonderful job. It was a good party, celebrating the end of a year of performances, and we all went home happy, except for one caller who was still wishing she could do over just three minutes of time earlier in the evening.
M
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4 comments:
And I was just thinking what a great job you did yesterday! We had so much fun.
Martha, you are WAY too hard on yourself! My suspicion is that the dancers only remember a lovely dance. Regardless of what you left out the first time around, in the end your instruction and calling were spot-on for both dances. My only concern as a dancer doing "Portsmouth" was remembering that as a two I was supposed to cast up with my parther. The first couple of times through as a two I just stood there until Mark reminded me.
Thanks for the compliment regarding "St. Louis." I mostly credit its success to our callers group, who have been so willing to let me work on the teaching of it time and time again.
It was a very nice evening indeed!
You are both too kind. (Writer pauses to think...) No, just the right amount of kind. :-)
This seems to happen. Eric's story of a horrendous night at Childgrove is deliciously awful, full of dark stormy night horrors. Yet when I asked several people how it went, they all said "It was good! We all had a great time."
And didn't the same happen with one of you?
What a great gig this is. You screw up and people just go ahead and have a good time anyway...
Thanks, Kay, for the note about the twos forgetting to cast up. That happens a lot, I've noticed. I say "Twos cast and Ones turn down." I think I should say something like "TWOs! TWOs CAST and the ones turn down." Because if the ones forget to turn, they still get shouldered out of the way by the twos and they're in the right place for the next move.
Martha, while I didn't witness the event, if you called one dance that went that well consider it a partial victory, and remember that the problems you had with the other dance are a learning experience for you. We learn through our mistakes, and realizing that you made mistakes makes it more likely you won't repeat those mistakes again (or at least not often).
By the way, I'm posting these rather throwaway platitudes mostly as a test to see if I'm now able to post here.
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