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I must be a glutton for punishment. I'm trying, onnnnne morrrre tiiiiiime, to learn C-4. That's the largest existing list of square dance calls.
As a new dancer, you learn maybe 120 calls -- well enough that you can execute them a split second after the words are spoken -- and you dance "Plus". Tack on another eighty in addition to the first batch, with a couple of call-modifying words known as "concepts" tossed in there, and you dance the next larger list, "A-1". So forth through A-2, C-1, C-2, C-3A, C-3B. As you continue to do this, the "concepts" get more and more complex, but you still have to be able to apply them quickly enough to dance.
The level past C-3B is C-4, but instead of adding a moderate eighty new calls to the previous seething mass, it adds a bit over five hundred new calls. There are also concepts so complex that reputable callers write technical white papers about them. For some dancers, the sheer volume of memorization is what makes C-4 such a difficult level to learn. For others, the concepts are just too much of a pain. I'm in the former group. Give me the mental puzzles any day, but memorization will send me to an early grave.
My challenge now is to figure out how to get five hundred calls lodged in my brain, and lodged well enough all at the same time that I can actually show up at a C-4 dance. Once I can do that I can start to practice. Once I can start to practice, I can begin to get GOOD at executing these calls. After some time improving my execution, I'll be a dancer people won't hate to see. But I can't practice until I've got pretty much all five hundred. Showing up without knowing the list isn't fair to anyone else who's there. So the learning curve, graphed, looks something like the left hand side of a Cape style house: STRAIGHT UP for a story or two, then a 45 degree angle after that until you reach the roof peak. It's that first step that's a doozy.
I've gotten halfway up to the roof once or twice before. But I always fall back down. I need the WHOLE list before I can solidify any gains.
So this time I've got tapes to dance to -- by myself, with seven invisible people, of course, in my living room. Keeping track of seven invisible people is hard, but it's less hard than NOT doing it! I've written a computer program that will quiz me about call definitions. Rob is helping me interpret the concept papers. I've got a master list where I'm checking stuff off: know this, need study on that, haven't learned this other thing yet.
Wheee.
A while back I said I needed a project. Why didn't I stick to organizing photos? :-)
As a new dancer, you learn maybe 120 calls -- well enough that you can execute them a split second after the words are spoken -- and you dance "Plus". Tack on another eighty in addition to the first batch, with a couple of call-modifying words known as "concepts" tossed in there, and you dance the next larger list, "A-1". So forth through A-2, C-1, C-2, C-3A, C-3B. As you continue to do this, the "concepts" get more and more complex, but you still have to be able to apply them quickly enough to dance.
The level past C-3B is C-4, but instead of adding a moderate eighty new calls to the previous seething mass, it adds a bit over five hundred new calls. There are also concepts so complex that reputable callers write technical white papers about them. For some dancers, the sheer volume of memorization is what makes C-4 such a difficult level to learn. For others, the concepts are just too much of a pain. I'm in the former group. Give me the mental puzzles any day, but memorization will send me to an early grave.
My challenge now is to figure out how to get five hundred calls lodged in my brain, and lodged well enough all at the same time that I can actually show up at a C-4 dance. Once I can do that I can start to practice. Once I can start to practice, I can begin to get GOOD at executing these calls. After some time improving my execution, I'll be a dancer people won't hate to see. But I can't practice until I've got pretty much all five hundred. Showing up without knowing the list isn't fair to anyone else who's there. So the learning curve, graphed, looks something like the left hand side of a Cape style house: STRAIGHT UP for a story or two, then a 45 degree angle after that until you reach the roof peak. It's that first step that's a doozy.
I've gotten halfway up to the roof once or twice before. But I always fall back down. I need the WHOLE list before I can solidify any gains.
So this time I've got tapes to dance to -- by myself, with seven invisible people, of course, in my living room. Keeping track of seven invisible people is hard, but it's less hard than NOT doing it! I've written a computer program that will quiz me about call definitions. Rob is helping me interpret the concept papers. I've got a master list where I'm checking stuff off: know this, need study on that, haven't learned this other thing yet.
Wheee.
A while back I said I needed a project. Why didn't I stick to organizing photos? :-)
