Notes from the weekend:

I attended Scares and Squares, Rosetown Ramblers’‘ annual fly-in, this past weekend. It was, as most dance weekends are, a lot of fun. I’ve gone to S&S for the past several years, and was originally scheduled to call at this one. However, they decided they needed to cut back a little, so they went with their two main callers, Mike DeSisto and Michael Kellogg. (Does there seem to be a plethora of callers named Mike/Michael? Last year, the Albuquerque Singles Fling did an M&M show with Mike Seastrom and Mike Bramlett. At Scares and Squares, there were GCA callers Michael McMullen and Michael Levy. Could it have something to do with microphones? Mic? Mike? Hmmm…)

So Mike and Michael are both super-high-energy callers; needless to say, we worked up a sweat, even in the somewhat chilly Portland weather.

Notes on two callers/one hall: Mike and Michael called together a lot, which is great for energy/entertainment, but not so great for a program with a variety of music and “feels”. One caller can play with mood: maybe do a mellow singing call, or use a melodic patter record. But these tend to be idiosyncratic, meaning that two callers probably won’t do the same mellow singers. So it’s harder for them to do a duet.

There are some standard singers that callers will use when they need to call together; Mike and Michael didn’t use a lot of those. They seemed to be able to find other high energy songs that they could do together…until they did an all singing call tip with both “Mountain Music” and “Tennessee River”. When the second song started to play, I almost thought they’d made a mistake and put the same record back on. I guess sometimes it “works” to use two really similar singers together; the dancers certainly enjoyed it.

Another area that’s hard with two callers/one room is doing “specialty” choreography. When you’re alternating sequences, it’s hard to develop a theme. Mike did get Michael to play with him on a “move on” tip (one of Mike’s specialties: moving dancers from one square to another, and getting them back together). Michael picked up the idea right away, and they both moved us around through the nine-square grid.

Moving in one direction (towards side walls or toward head walls) seems pretty easy; it’s sort of a chicken plucker kind of routine, with the “move on” part resembling a multi-square trade by. So one can do a “Pass Thru, Move On, Right and Left Thru, Pass Thru, Move On” and be back with intact original squares. Throw in some zeroes and equivalents (but keep it really easy; you don’t want any breakdowns). Where it gets trickier is when Mike does a bend the line after a couple of Move Ons, so that we start moving in the other direction. I’m not quite sure how all that works (and it’s hard to (a) get enough checkers and (b) move 9 squares through the various calls).

Both Mike and Michael are easy to work with (I’ve called with both and enjoyed it) and both are pros, so they made working together look easy, and they sounded great together.

On Sunday, Michael called along with some non-staff callers. Len Christiansen got to do all of the singing call records he’s produced on his BBear record label. If you haven’t check out his music, you should. He’s released “Every Second”, “She Comes Around” and “Man with the Bag” (my personal favorite), and is working on some new ones.