Guest Callers at Childgrove

With Martha and Bob off enjoying a week of dance at Cumberland Dance Camp there's nobody to congratulate the Guest Callers at last night's Childgrove Dance, so I guess I'll do it.

It wasn't a typical Childgrove dance. We always get new dancers, but last night there were so many dancers in the beginners' workshop that Mac actually formed two contra lines. This is most certainly a good thing, but it meant that all evening long there was a lot more teaching going on than usual.

Karen called her first dance in public, Salmonchanted Evening, by Steve Zakon. She did very well. Her timing on the calls was admirable. The only complaint I had as a dancer was that she continued to call throughout the entire dance. When I asked her about it later, though, she said she had to. With so many new dancers in the group, whenever she stopped calling the dance started falling apart.

My dance came a little bit later. I sat out the square dance that came right before my dance just to get my thoughts in order. Unfortunately, people were having trouble with relatively straightforward square dance movements (like "circle left!"). Mac finally had everyone go back home and started again with a much simpler square.

I was not feeling confident at this point. Fly Around My Pretty Little Miss is a fun dance (I hope) but it is not a beginners dance!

The good news is that the band, The Mound City Slickers, had agreed to play the old-time song after which the dance was named. Since that was the song I had been using to practice the call, I was on familiar ground.

Of course, the dance used a couple of moves for the first time that evening which meant they were brand new for some of the dancers. "Hands across Star" wasn't a big problem, but we had to do an extra walk-through of the "Ladies pass-left-shoulders-in-the-center hey."

The real problem during the walk through came at the two places during the dance when I wanted to stop and talk. At both these places the gents and ladies were doing different things and they could dance it faster than I could talk it. Once you get dancers moving it's hard to make them hold still (grin).

When all was said and done, however, the dance went well. It was a little bit ragged throughout -- I was able to stop calling, but I still had to add gentle reminders to get people back on track when the dance started to drift away. By the end of the dance, I was feeling pretty good about the whole thing.

Now I'm eager to hear how "Fly Around..." was received when Bob and/or Martha called it at Cumberland.