Re: How do you re-capture the fun?

 In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> I'm a decent contra dancer after two years of dancing.  I remember
> much of the trouble I had learning to dance, and have made suggestions
> over this forum as to how beginners could better be brought into the
> dance community.

It is a good question.  It isn't particulary simple.  "Better"
can be quicksand.


>
> But the problem is not just in the beginners, but in the 
> general dance community.  If everybody "helped," beginners 
> could be brought up to speed more quickly.  

This is a good ideal.  Largely, it is what community dance is 
about, IMO.


> Unfortunatly, the callers usually discourage this
> by discouraging the experienced dancers from helping 
> the inexperienced dancers.  

Sometimes there aer good reasons for this.  I've seen 
well-meaning "help" change an adequite 90 second 
walkthrough into a 5 minute quagmire.  

Sometimes you know they'll get it the second time through, but they will be
confused the first time through.  Nothing will
make it faster, but you can hinder that.


> I see this repeatedly in the walk-throughs and in the
> beginners lessons.  Callers seem to want to control the "lesson" and
> input from other participants is not welcomed.  This is doubly
> destructive because we often learn best what we teach.
>

Participation can be very good.  Sometimes it isn't, though.

In my workshop, I try to have beginners do a move half a 
dozen times (with feedback), so they can get the feel and 
the timing.  Get an experienced dancer who wants to SHOW 
that there are 4 variations on that move?  Will that help?


> In addition, I find that dancers in general just don't seem to
> understand certain things about contra dancing that to me seem
> obvious.  

Oh, that is so true for all of us. But sometimes what strikes
me as "obvious" strikes someone else as "wrong."   

Like the guy who shows moves (above):  he thinks it's wrong 
to try to get them to do things one way that is smooth and 
feels good.  It's deceptive telling them it's how to do it, 
when there are a few "right" ways.  That is obviously something
I don't understant and he helps me with it.

<snip>

> ... it's completely unnecessary to remember the
> figures.
>
> Part of the reason for this is that the dancers up and down the entire
> line communicate with each other throughout the dance.  Each dancer
> has a gist of an idea of the next figure, and between the gists, a
> complete memory is formed.  Beginners screw up more often not because
> they don't remember the next figure, or don't know how to do it, but
> because they don't know how to participate in this group
> communications.    


Wow.  I think this is one of the best descriptions of community dance I've 
heard.

Quote of the year here, Bruce.


>
> The receiving end of the communication is principally visual:  Looking
> at what your opposite is doing.  Looking at what everybody else is
> doing.  Looking for leads.  It is also partly touch:  feeling the lead
> given to you.   (The "sending" end consists of the leads I mentioned
> above plus just being in the right place and doing the right thing at
> the right time.)


Ah!  That explains something to me.  On first read I though -he's just mistaken, 

the primary medium is tactile.  (Sound plays a huge part, too.)

But then I realized:  That is why you think contras are some much easier for
everyone- visual is much easier for you and contras are more visual than 
say, circle mixers, squares, waltzes or what have you.  Not everyone
is that visual.

There is something very visually powerful about seeing the moves duplicated
up and down the line.  Almost like having parallel mirrors eight feet apart.


>
> Beginners screw up the group communication principally by not looking
> at other people.  You can often pick out the beginners by how little
> they seem to be aware of the other dancers, until they blunder into
> them.  I tell beginners constantly to look at the other dancers, that
> that helps them do the dance more than most anything else they could
> do. 

Not just visual: they don't look, they do not feel, and they don't listen
to the music the way experienced dancers do.  "Aware"  is really what I can 
take from this paragraph.

<snip>


>
> Having observed this much, I do not say that I could provide training
> in proper leads.  However, I figure that, if I alert others to this
> notion, maybe someone will come up with a way of teaching dancers to
> lead and to accept leads -- i.e., to communicate the dance without
> memorizing it.

There's a lot of us that work pretty hard at it.  I think that
is why we can get so hostile to someone who has not tried their
ideas out on real groups of beginners telling us "HERE is how
you do it."

If you worked at it, as a caller or a workshop teacher, whatever,
you would find that some notions work well.  Others just sound 
like they should work and you can't can't see any reason for it, 
but they don't.

But you would also find that if you had some thing that worked a 
bit, and someone came along and wrecked the rhythm of what you 
were doing while they were trying to help...

Callers and beginners workshop teachers are sometimes like that.



>
> The point of all this is that if the entire dance community 
> is brought "up to speed" on how to bring beginners up to 
> speed, then it would beccome more of a real community.  

A whole community?  Up to speed?  What, you gonna kick someone 
out just 'cause they're a bit of a lame ass?

We're talking about people here.

Real communities always have bit of disfunction to them.  One
way or another.  Would you like to try my tinfoil helmet?


> I do not feel that most callers do
> much to facilitate this, which is not to blame them for 
> the problem, but merely to point out that they may be in 
> a position to help fix it. 

Sometimes I can see the problems a caller has and know 
exactly how they can fix them.  When that happens, I have 
a choice.

I can either be an obnoxious fool or I can leave quietly by the back door.

I've done both.  Depends on my mood.

Michael Young