Almost all "Caller's Workshops" feature callers calling and others commenting on their calling. The focus is often on timing, volume, choice of words. I do not want to focus on the physical act of calling.
Remember the old saying "Please do not try this at home"? In this case, please try, often, to do this in the privacy of your home, before you dare to do this in public. You can --YOU SHOULD -- practice calling to tape recorded music at home. Put the music on. Practice calling. Make sure your call is well in advance of the point at which the dancers must execute the move. Be forceful: If need be, "scream" out the move.
Timing and volume are matters which should be dealt with by you-- in the privacy of your own home. Practice--and practice--and practice. Perhaps get a few friends to come to your house--and then you call a few dances. Get them to critique you.
What, then, will we focus on in this workshop? We will focus on teaching the moves, teaching the dances, choosing dances, and constructing an evening's program.
THE ESSENCE OF CALLING IS TEACHING THE DANCE.
Almost anyone can call a dance. When it comes to experienced dancers -- the art of calling is almost Zero: if you've taught the dance well, within one or two calls, your services are not needed.
(There is something about calling that is hard to teach -- but good callers have it. It is not only "What" you say that matters, it is also "How" you say it that matters. I often find the pitch of my voice changes, the rhythm, tone, changes, as I say, "And now get ready for... Right & Left through..." My voice goes "up" at "ready for... Intonation, rhythm, volume, timing -- all these are important and it all gets better as you practice more -- as you have more "flying time.")
But most important of all is teaching the moves.
HOW TO TEACH A DANCE
You need to move quickly, and effortlessly, through the easy parts. Make it clear - this is easy, you can do these moves. In fact, I've heard some caller's say "The first move is circle left, but you know how to do that, so don't do it." You need to move quickly through these parts so you can focus on the "difficult" parts.
Every good dance has a "difficult" part: something slightly unusual that makes the dance pleasing. For instance, Gene Hubert's "Sarah's Journey" opens with a "box the gnat with your opposite, then, with your free left hand, men pull by each other, go across the set and swing your partner." It is highly unusual to open a contra with "box the gnat," and then the men move across the set to swing their partners. You must move slowly through this first section. Explain illustrate--be prepared for problems. And just recently I heard Joseph Pimentel say over & over, "In this dance NO Balance. Remember NO Balance."
This a great trick -- because box the gnat is often preceded by "Balance, box the gnat." But in this dance, there is "No Balance." That's the tricky part in this dance -- "No Balance." And he said he learned this trick from Becky Hill. As someone once said "Immature artists immitate; mature artists steal." "Steal" every good trick of calling you can. Of course you should try to give credit to the person you "stole" it from, but "Originality is remembering what someone told you -- and forgetting who it was who told it to you." Pay attention to every caller. Every single one of them has something to teach you -- even if that something is what you should Not do! The rest of "Sarah's Journey" consists of moves enormously familiar to all contra dancers -- circle left, dosido, swing.... You need not spend much time teaching that.
Teaching a dance should take very little time -- because 90% of most dances are familiar, usual. Your job as a caller is to spot the "difficult" parts -- the places where dancers get lost. How do you find those spots? Personally, if there is a "mistake" to be made in a dance, I tend to make it -- so I know where others will make mistakes. But often the very act of teaching a dance reveals where the difficult spots are.
And let the dancers know -- this is the difficult part -- this is where, if the dance breaks down , it will break down here. It is nice to let dancers know there are difficult spots in a dance. It makes them feel bette r-- and they, too, can learn to focus on the difficult sections of the dance.
Some other very obvious points about teaching (I have seen this obvious point "violated" by countless callers) is DON'T take longer teaching the dance than doing the dance. An almost unbreakable rule is, after ten or so minutes, either start the music & do the dance & hope it works -- or abandon this dance. Chose another dance. Long bouts of teaching destroy much of the pleasure of an evening's dance.
Another trick of teaching -- one it is has taken me a long time to learn -- is to say "dosido along-the-line," or "box-the-gnat along-the-line." Mentioning "along-the-line" gives the dancers a sense of where the move is to be executed.
Lisa Greenleaf also says you need to study every dance you call very carefully -- so carefully that you know where every dancer is at every stage of the dance. To be honest, I am not sure I am able to do that yet.
CONSTRUCTING AN EVENING'S PROGRAM
HOW YOU CHOOSE THE DANCES
Of course the first consideration is "who" are you calling for? Raw beginners? Advanced dancers? Some mix of the two? Are you calling at a dance camp? We can't possibly cover all contingencies, but here are a couple of ways to prepare.
When I first began calling I almost always opened every evening dance with Bob Dalsemer's "Dog Branch Reel." It is an enormously simple contra -- but it is lively enough so that dancers love it. It immediately unites the "hall' (down the hall four in line), but best of all, it allows me to "gauge" the level of ability of the dancers facing me. One of the moves of the dance is "inactives swing, end facing up." If such a move induces total chaos, you know you have inexperienced contra dancers. If everyone executes the move unhesitatingly, you know you are facing fairly experienced contra dancers.
The idea that one should (could) open every dance with the same dance is mentioned in Mary Dart's book (see enclosed excerpt). Several callers believe that, for several reasons, always starting with the same dance is a good thing.
The most important thing I do -- and I do it for every dance I call -- is create a chart of the dances I will call that evening. I want to be sure that almost all my dances contain partners swings, and that almost all of them contain neighbors swings, but that's my particular preference. My article on creating a dance chart explains in greater detail why a caller should create "charts."
I don't begin by creating a chart. I begin by choosing some dances I plan to do (depending on the crowd I'm calling for), but once I've chosen a few dances, I begin thinking about the order of presentation, and that necessitates that I chart the dances I've chosen.
Copyright © 2006 Henry
Morgenstein