The glamorous life of a square dance caller

[cjsmith]

Writing good hard C4 choreography is slow. I keep forgetting HOW slow; perhaps I block it out of my memory.

My next big weekend is coming up in early March. I need two sessions, which will easily be sixty hours of work. I should have started in on this in January. I knew that. I even planned for that. My job intervened. (Yes, there's a lesson in there for me.) Sadly, this isn't the sort of task that's amenable to one big concentrated push. Trying to do too much at once is mind-numbing. However, it's got to be done. Rob said it well: it's like NaNoWriMo except the stuff has to be good.

The caller fee for this dance doesn't cover my airfare, much less the two days I'll have to take off work, so it would be very amusing to me to figure out just how much money I am "making" per hour writing this choreography. Negative five bucks? :-)

Comments

[eeyore-grrl.livejournal.com]

what is the definition of "good hard" is it that they can't follow? or that theyh can but are winded? or that it looks pretty and all of the above?

this isnot my element. just a basic question.

and have fun with it. obviously it isn't for the cold hard cash... it's for the fun and love of what you do.

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

It's surprisingly difficult to pin down an answer to that question. It makes the dancers think -- at the C4 square dance level, the "puzzle solving" is a major part of the fun -- and yet the movements also go together smoothly so that the physical dancing part is fun to do. It's not repetitive, either mentally or physically. A motion that is short to do is also short for me to say so they aren't waiting for me to quit blabbing. It doesn't spin anybody around in place too much and cause dizziness. Nobody's standing still for too long.

Getting the "puzzle solving" part to be challenging enough but not too difficult is what takes the time for me. I can make the movements flow without working too hard, but I'm not necessarily engaging their brains. This group I'm about to go call for wants their brains worked.

The prep time is the work, for me, and the fun calling time is the reward. In three weeks I'll be all burbly and cheerful about how enjoyable this dance is! :-)

[sunnydale47.livejournal.com]

Thanks for explaining that, CJ. I was wondering too.

I have another question. Is it more of a challenge to choreograph and call a dance for experienced dancers or a group where at least some of the people have never square danced before? I imagine that a higher level is harder to choreograph and novices are harder to call for, but I have no idea if that's right.

About 10-15 years ago someone donated a square dance to my church auction a few times. They were great fun! A few people were experienced dancers, a few had some familiarity with square dancing, but the majority had no idea what they were doing.

I learned to square dance in school. I remember very little, but it came more easily to me than to most as the decades-old memory traces revived. There were some that were really clueless, even after the caller's instructions. He was very patient, even when a square would totally disintegrate with the dancers people trying to dance crashing into one another because they had no idea what they were supposed to be doing!

I'm just wondering what that's like from the caller's point of view. (I think I may have asked you that question once, but if I did, I'm damned if I can remember what you said. )

It was a lot of fun though. I wish they would offer that again! I can't join a square dance group because I have to sit out too many dances because of pain and/or fatigue. I start out with great enthusiasm but as the evening goes on I'm doing more sitting than dancing, and eventually I get completely tapped out and just watch. But I enjoyed doing what I could!

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

It's a totally different kind of challenge to call for complete novices. I've done it, but I am not particularly good at it, since that's not the skill set I've spent years learning. To do well, the caller must make things clear to people with varying ways of understanding things -- for example, Bob might recognize a new call as "the one where you use right hands, then left hands" while Chris remembers "you end up standing where you started" and Mary remembers "you meet your partner, then the other guy, then your partner again". I could probably become better at that, but I'm not now. The caller also has to project a fun / friendly / energizing personality to get people to have a good time -- showmanship. Also, the program should be interesting without being overwhelming. I'm a whole lot better at overwhelming. ;-)

It's really easy for the dancers to get confused, especially early on. As long as everyone is taking it in stride and having a good time, it's hard to go wrong. When people get uptight and start blaming then it's break time!

I too wish I could dance more. I could probably dance one or two in a night, but I'd pay for it later, and one or two isn't all that much. I'm glad I can keep calling. That's my remaining link to this activity.

[lkeele.livejournal.com]

Hee! It's fun, though sometimes depressing, to do that sort of mathematics, isn't it? Negative five bucks. Perfect.

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

I think I'd actually be a bit sad if I knew the true number. It's not as nice as negative five, that's for sure; I'm out of paid time off at work. Let's see, post-tax pay for two days... plus the airfare, minus the pay for the dance (let's ignore the fact that I'll pay tax on that later)... hmm, it might be negative five if I take a little longer to do this prep than I thought I would. :-)