Fledgling!

Thanks to the generosity of Judy, who let me call part of her evening, I now have my fledgling wings! Even though it may seem pretty silly, I have to admit that I'm really proud of my little gold wings. I'm also thankful that the Calling Gods were kind to me and kept me from making any horrible mistakes - just little ones, which good-natured dancers were happy to ignore.

It was rather different to call five in a row instead of one at a time. There's a lot of time where you are just standing there watching for trouble, and it's easy to let your mind wander. Then, when trouble develops, it takes a moment to recover your bearings.

I realize now that I could have easily figured out where trouble was going to occur and be ready to start calling again before it started, instead of waiting until it had already occurred. There were a few dancers who, when any two were in the same group of four, generated enough confusuion for that group that the dance would break down, even when one of the other dancers in the set of four was an experienced dance fixer! I should have been keeping an eye on those folks, and if one was coming from one direction, and one from another, start calling again as they met up.

In spite of having learned at Sugar Hill not to change the dance I was going to call at the last minute, I learned on Sunday to change every dance I was going to call at the last minute. The first dance I planned to do had almost exactly the same moves as the dance Judy called as the first dance, so it had to go. After that, I just kind of went through the cards that I had pulled out to choose from and created a new order, on the fly, doing the hardest one third (of the four dances I thought I was going to call), leaving an easier one for last. Then Judy asked me to call one more. (Gulp!) No guts, no glory, I figured, so I pulled another slightly harder one, and it went just fine (thank you Lord!).

All in all, though, I would say that it was grand good fun to call almost half a dance. It really helps to have dancers and musicians as good as the ones at the dance on Sunday, of course.

M
E