Excerpts of notes from Bob Archers Sidmouth Callers Workshops 1998 Calling a dance Timing is all important - when to put the calls in so that people can hear them and understand them in time. You need to be calling just ahead of the phrase of music. For example, if each step is represented by a dash or an underlined word you might choose to call "Timber Salvage Reel" as follows: Timber Salvage Reel dosido the one below A1 1-4 Dosido your neighbour dosido your part ner 5-8 Dosido your partner first couple balance and swing A2 1-8 First couple balance and swing 1s lead down the hall _ B1 1-4 First couple lead down turn and lead back _ 5-8 First couple lead back, cast around for a right hand star cast around the twos B2 1-4 Right hand star back the other way with a left hand star 5-8 Left hand star There are several things to note: This is a 32 bar dance which is split into four phrases of music, each 8 bars long - A1, A2, B1, B2. This matches the structure of many tunes. Typically a tune will have an 8 bar A music which is repeated, and an 8 bar B music which is repeated to give a total of 32 bars. There are many exceptions to this rule but it is still worth knowing. There are two steps to the bar, thus a 32 bar dance such as this takes 64 steps. Pick whichever you are happiest using when making your own notes, although most bands will want to work in terms of bars. Most English books of dances refer to bars, most American books refer to steps or counts. The call for each movement happens during the previous movement and is over by the time the given movement is supposed to have started. As the dancers become more familiar with the dance you might want to call but with shortened decsriptions. This might lead to calls such as the following: dosido the one below A1 1-4 Dosido your neighbour _ and your part ner 5-8 Dosido your partner 1s balance A2 1-8 First couple balance and swing 1s lead down
B1 1-4 First couple lead down _ and back 5-8 First couple lead back, right hand star cast around the twos B2 1-4 Right hand star left hand star 5-8 Left hand star In general people have come to a dance to dance rather than to listen to the caller. This means that you should stop calling as soon as you can, although no sooner. In practice you might find you have to call a dance all of the way through Practice to records. Pick a dance and some suitable music then practice fitting your calls to the music. Record yourself doing this, then play back the recording and try and dance to it. If the band agree, you might also like to record yourself at an actual dance. This sort of self analysis is very useful, but also very difficult. One of the nice things about calling is that you can get almost instant feedback on how you're doing. Basically, are the dancers doing what you want when you want them to? This applies both to the walkthrough and the dance itself. Be honest with yourself, but avoid being overly critical. If people are having trouble following your instructions think about how you can explain things in a different manner. Think about the quality of your diction. Do you pronounce words clearly or do you slur them? Look after your voice - there are some singers excercises which you might find useful. One easy one is to sing softly on your way to the booking - this warms up the vocal chords gently. Watch other callers, see what language they use. Different callers have different ways of explaining figures. Even if you like your way of explaining something, have a couple of alternative explanations ready in case your normal explanation doesn't work. Mistakes Sooner or later you will make a mistake - you might miss a move out in the walkthrough, the instructions you have on your card might be wrong, you might call the wrong move during the dance. Making a mistake is not a crime, what matters is how you handle the mistake. It is sometimes possible to cover up the mistake. If you're calling for an audience of beginners and you call a circle left instead of a right hand star during the walkthrough in some generic sicilian circle dance the chance are that no one's going to notice (unless the previous movement was also a circle left). If you're calling at a Sidmouth LNE and you get Nottingham Swing wrong people are going to notice and pull you up on it. Don't try and blame your mistakes on anyone else. You might even have to accept the blame for some mistakes that weren't yours. On occasions you might find that you've picked the wrong dance - usually much too difficult for the dancers on the floor. You have two choices: 1. Drop the dance entirely and waste the time you've already spent on it. 2. Carry on teaching and possibly waste even more time. This is not an easy decision to make, you just have to rely on your judgement. Make sure
that this doesn't happen on the last dance. You want to leave people on a high. Ill-chosen words This is taken from rec.folk-dancing and was put together by Jim Saxe. ------- Start rec.folk-dancing extract ------- Below is the beginning of a summary of the examples given in the responses I've received, together with examples I've accumulated from my own dancing and calling experience. But first some comments and caveats. The examples given below and in the later installments to follow should be read with a critical eye. Ideally, they would clearly illustrate direct connections between poorly chosen words on the part of callers and confusion on the part of dancers. In practice the words reported may not be what a caller actually said, but only what the caller remembers having said or what a dancer remembers having heard. Any confusion that was later observed may have been due to a variety of causes, which might or might not relate to the caller's choice of particular words; for example, the caller may have chosen inappropriate material, failed to understand the dance thoroughly before presenting it, failed to verify that all dancers were correctly positioned after each figure in the walk-through, or failed to maintain the dancers' attention. Or other words that the caller said earlier than the ones reported might have sowed the seeds of confusion. Or the words in the example might be words that some caller avoids (or that somebody thinks callers should avoid) for fear that they *might* cause confusion. The same words that are effective with one group of dancers may be ineffective with another group. Alternative "better" wordings suggested in some of the examples may not actually be more effective in a given situation than the original "bad" wordings. Contorting your teaching in order to avoid the words used in a "bad" example--or in order to set the context for some clever bit of "good" phrasing--may do more harm than good. In short, these examples and any associated commentary are no substitute for your good judgment. I've made some attempt to group the examples into categories-- sound-alikes (covered in this message), ambiguities, timing problems, etc.--but many of the examples could equally well fit into two or more categories. In such cases I've made somewhat arbitrary decisions, being more concerned with writing the examples down that with devising an ideal system of classification. Thanks to all the people who've help me compile the examples in this message and in the messages to follow, either by their responses to my queries on rec.folk-dancing or through recent private conversations. These include: Bob Archer, Jenny Beer, Bo Bradham, Roger Broseus, Ron Buchanan, Harold Cheyney, Brent Chivers, Charlie Fenton, Jim Fownes, Michael Fuerst, Anne Hillman, Donna Howell, Larry Jennings, Jon Leech, Alan Gedance, Jonathan Griffiths, Jackie Hoffman, Paul Marsh, Greg McKenzie, David Millstone, Russell Owen, Obejoyful, Ted Swift, Tony Parkes, Dan Pearl, Ted Swift, Kiran Wagle, and perhaps others whose names I've inadvertently omitted. My thinking about words to use in teaching and calling dances has also benefitted (I hope) from interactions with many other dancers, musicians, and callers over the years, and I won't even attempt to list them all. Of course none of the above-mentioned individuals
necessarily subscribes the opinions expressed in what follows. In fact, I'm not so sure about some of those opinions myself. Enough preamble. On to the examples. * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * First, here are some examples involving sound-alike words words that sound similar to other words because they share a syllable or even a vowel sound. Note that not all these examples necessarily involve ill-chosen words. In some cases the potential problems might be avoided by more careful enunciation or more careful teaching rather than by a different choice of words. "A!" -- directing the band that they should now be starting the A part of the music, but heard by dancers as "Hey!" "Centers" -- pronounced as "c'en'rs" and thus potentially heard as "ends". I noticed this one while listening to a tape of my own calling and hearing what I thought at first was "ends arch ends dive." I don't remember actually seeing problems during the dance, so perhaps an effective walk-through made up for my later sloppy enunciation. "Ladies change" -- heard as "Ladies chain." "End ladies chain" -- intended to mean a diagonal chain by two ladies at the ends of facing lines of four during a square dance, but heard as "and ladies chain," setting all the ladies into motion (this despite a successful walk-through with just the end ladies chaining at that point in the dance). "Four in line", and "Forward and back" -- to tell the dancers what to do after the two swings in a dance. Prompts with unique first syllables (e.g., "down the hall" vs. "long lines") are better. "On the corner, allemande left" -- I'm not sure about the origin of the term "On the/ your corner" (at the corner of the square?). In any case I once saw a dancer who evidently heard "on" as "honor," taking a quick bow to his corner before the allemande each time this call was used. "Partner" and "Corner" -- easily mistaken for each other in a noisy hall, especially if the call is something like "Allemande left your partner." The old gender-biased expression "corner lady" actually served a practical purpose in distinguishing these terms, since the expression "partner lady" was not used. "Start..." -- "... a right and left through", "... a hey", etc., heard as "Star". "Switch" -- heard as "swing" when shouted from the sidelines to tell a pair of dancers that they were out of position. "With" -- potentially heard as "swing" in phrases like "With your corner, allemande left." A caller's use of a particular word may have the unfortunate effect of suggesting a different usage of the same word. Here are some examples that I subjectively chose to categorize as sound-alike phrases, rather than in some other category. "Balance forward and back" -- in a ring of eight. Understood by some dancers as an eight-count "forward and back" during the walk-through and danced that way
(despite use of the call "balance" without "forward and back") during the dance, thus turning the timing for the following figures into a scramble. "Do-si-do" -- an old traditional name in the south and west for the figure now called "do-paso" and numerous variants, easily confused with the New England do-si-do (the latter being referred to as "back to back" in English country dance, and as "do SA do" in modern western square dance), even when the caller takes pains to be explicit about the distinction during the teaching. "It's a long swing" -- leading some dancers to form long lines immediately on hearing the word "long." "Go right into..." -- "... a left hand star" or other figure. "right hand star" and "right and left through" -- said with "right and" and "right hand" having similar cadence and dynamics. "Go 'round -- continuing with something like "... that big 'ol ring" as patter during a grand right and left, but leading dancers to expect "... your own and the other way back." "Star thru" -- suggesting "star" to dancers not familiar with this inaplty named (in my opinion) figure borrowed from modern western square dancing. "Swing thru" -- suggesting "swing" to dancers not familiar with this inaplty named (in my opinion) figure borrowed from modern western square dancing. If the hall is noisy, the acoustics are poor, and/or the sound system is poorly adjusted, or the callers' enunciation and mic technique are poor, it's easy for some words to become completely lost (i.e., be sound-alikes for nothing). This can be particularly troublesome with words like "not" and "don't": "Don't get below those two's" -- said to keep the swinging active couples in Chorus Jig from drifting down the set, but apparently causing more dancers than ever to cast out through the wrong spaces when the word "don't" got lost in the din. "Ladies chain over but not back" -- heard as "Ladies chain mumble mumble back."