Denver day 3
May. 24th, 2007 04:16 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
billeylerI just finished catching up on LJ, most of the posts being
bjarvis
's quite succinct synopsises of the intermediate and advanced sessions with the caller coaches.
This three days of working with the beginner callers has been good in that I've seen 10 people progress from just a vague interesting in learning to call to fevered work on preparing for their first dance in front of live people in just a very few hours. Out of the 10, only ONE had ever had any training at all. And of the 10, only 1 fit into the scary category of "this one definitely shouldn't be here."
Anne was right when she told me on Monday that I could easily teach the caller school. It's material I've been over dozens of time before in real life, not just in theory. As a teaching assistant, my job was to be the continuity for the beginners with the 3 paid staff members rotating between lessons. I was able to work with all the coaches on the same level as if I were the 'headliner'...which worked well for me. Hoped it worked as well for the people in the class, and didn't cause any confusion. The material for the new callers was the basic Chicken Plucker and extrapolations thereof, with lots of other relevant material thrown in, and I got to know some of them pretty well. There will be a couple of serious contenders from this group of folks (9 men and 1 woman)
Danny's spent a lot of quality relaxation hours here over the three days so far, even indulging in a one hour massage from hotel staff this morning. Lucky guy!
Today was the filtering in of many dozens of convention attendees. This is a HUGE relief, since we've been such a small contingent in this massive downtown Hyatt hotel. Multiple conventions happen at the same time here all the time, and it was feeling like we didn't have any presence at all. One treat was that Ken Rittucci from the Boston area happened to be here for a work conference (medical field of some sort) and he hung out with all of us as much as possible.
Tomorrow is the GCA school dance at 10am. I'm excited to go to this one, having been such a part of it. After that, I have to head out with Bear Miller, Charlie Robertson, and Kris to pick up our costumes for the trail in dance.
I did have one really odd episode today. Brian, one of the caller coordinators for the convention, stopped me in the lobby this morning to tell me to forget the Contra dance that was on the early schedule they had sent me. I asked him what he was talking about since I don't call Contras. He said that the preliminary schedule I had showed me calling a Contra dance (I didn't see that on the schedule!), but no one knew what it was so they dropped it from the schedule. What I had ASKED for (through Linda in Phoenix) was a Heritage dance where I could teach some of the square dances that were done in 1948 - 1955 that were the roots of what originally became MWSD. I just walked away shaking my head...of course, no one had talked to me about scheduling or asked me what it was I was trying to do. Ah, well.
This kinda falls into the category of them calling the "Intro to Calling" workshop a "GCA Callers Workshop" on the schedule...totally misleading!
Anyway, the social event of the evening was walking down to the Buell Theatre to see "Wicked"...VERY fun show to watch with the very large clatch of other square dancers there! We had great seats right in the middle of the theatre, and our friends Cal and Rover were right behind us, so we got to yak with them for a while.
The weather promises to improve over the next few days. Today (and yesterday) was rainy and cold. Ugh.
bjarvis's quite succinct synopsises of the intermediate and advanced sessions with the caller coaches.
This three days of working with the beginner callers has been good in that I've seen 10 people progress from just a vague interesting in learning to call to fevered work on preparing for their first dance in front of live people in just a very few hours. Out of the 10, only ONE had ever had any training at all. And of the 10, only 1 fit into the scary category of "this one definitely shouldn't be here."
Anne was right when she told me on Monday that I could easily teach the caller school. It's material I've been over dozens of time before in real life, not just in theory. As a teaching assistant, my job was to be the continuity for the beginners with the 3 paid staff members rotating between lessons. I was able to work with all the coaches on the same level as if I were the 'headliner'...which worked well for me. Hoped it worked as well for the people in the class, and didn't cause any confusion. The material for the new callers was the basic Chicken Plucker and extrapolations thereof, with lots of other relevant material thrown in, and I got to know some of them pretty well. There will be a couple of serious contenders from this group of folks (9 men and 1 woman)
Danny's spent a lot of quality relaxation hours here over the three days so far, even indulging in a one hour massage from hotel staff this morning. Lucky guy!
Today was the filtering in of many dozens of convention attendees. This is a HUGE relief, since we've been such a small contingent in this massive downtown Hyatt hotel. Multiple conventions happen at the same time here all the time, and it was feeling like we didn't have any presence at all. One treat was that Ken Rittucci from the Boston area happened to be here for a work conference (medical field of some sort) and he hung out with all of us as much as possible.
Tomorrow is the GCA school dance at 10am. I'm excited to go to this one, having been such a part of it. After that, I have to head out with Bear Miller, Charlie Robertson, and Kris to pick up our costumes for the trail in dance.
I did have one really odd episode today. Brian, one of the caller coordinators for the convention, stopped me in the lobby this morning to tell me to forget the Contra dance that was on the early schedule they had sent me. I asked him what he was talking about since I don't call Contras. He said that the preliminary schedule I had showed me calling a Contra dance (I didn't see that on the schedule!), but no one knew what it was so they dropped it from the schedule. What I had ASKED for (through Linda in Phoenix) was a Heritage dance where I could teach some of the square dances that were done in 1948 - 1955 that were the roots of what originally became MWSD. I just walked away shaking my head...of course, no one had talked to me about scheduling or asked me what it was I was trying to do. Ah, well.
This kinda falls into the category of them calling the "Intro to Calling" workshop a "GCA Callers Workshop" on the schedule...totally misleading!
Anyway, the social event of the evening was walking down to the Buell Theatre to see "Wicked"...VERY fun show to watch with the very large clatch of other square dancers there! We had great seats right in the middle of the theatre, and our friends Cal and Rover were right behind us, so we got to yak with them for a while.
The weather promises to improve over the next few days. Today (and yesterday) was rainy and cold. Ugh.
