Here’s a description of The Perfect Caller. This applies to traditional/contra callers, but some parts apply to square dance callers also. Some excerpts:

• never suffers from stage fright (improves with experience) or memory loss, never repeats bad jokes, has no irritating mannerisms and is never conceited or rude.
• explains everything briefly but clearly, can tell who has not understood and what they haven’t understood, and can explain again, in different words, as many times as necessary, without boring or patronizing the expert dancers. The Perfect Caller has a cribbook handy, just in case, but does not need to refer to it, and never reads it out word for word.
• can suggest that couples or partners swap around without making anyone feel inferior. Of course the Perfect Caller never has to stop the music and explain the dance again, but if a dance does “crash” the Perfect Caller stays calm and polite.
• improves its calling by learning from its mistakes (despite never making any), learning new dances, watching other callers and copying/avoiding what they do, and occasionally inviting criticism from friends.
• runs faster than a speeding train, clears buildings in a single bound, washes whiter than ordinary powders, contains no artificial flavorings or colorings …

So what do you think makes the perfect caller?

Heiner’s site contains some other interesting documents:

• Notes from a Don Armstrong Caller Seminar
• Dick Leger on caller schools
• Grand Square Workshop
• Notes on Phrase versus Beat

Got email tonight about a marketing meeting in Southern California. Here’s part of the blurb:

This meeting will consist of presentations, panels and discussions. The presentations will be made by marketing experts who will provide extraordinary guidance for us. It will be an open meeting with lots of audience participation. The sequence will run from defining marketing through choosing markets and communications, to looking at the economics and presenting specific projects to make it happen.

By the end of the meeting you will understand why marketing is much more powerful than recruiting, what is possible with a marketing approach to growing square dancing, and how to make square dancing attractive to more of the people you want to join you in it. You will also have a sense that square dancing can really happen, why it hasn’t been happening, and what you and other dancers can do.

There’s going to be a website, but it’s not up yet. The main site (godance.us) just has a pretty logo. But it’s a good domain name…

I wonder if this is a James Hensley project; Hensley was hired as the CALLERLAB Foundation’s marketing person. At any rate, I’d love to see a report of the meeting and a description of the various presentations.

Sometimes, I enjoy playing with anagrams, and here’s a site that makes it easy to generate a ton of anagrams. But it’s hard to find any that make even a little sense.

• square dance = careen squad (sometimes I think I’m in a square that meets this description)
• square dance caller = arcane call used req
• square dance caller = el rascal card queen
• CALLERLAB = Clara Bell
• CALLERLAB = abler call
• Swing Thru = hung wrist (true when someone won’t let go…)
• Wilde Bunch = club whined
• Kristin Jensen = ink jet sinners

The Mainstream Committee is doing its biennial survey to determine if any calls should be added or removed from the Mainstream list. Given that CALLERLAB as a whole is trying to shorten the MS list, it seems silly to ask for additions to the list. So even though I really miss Fan the Top, I didn’t suggest putting it back on the MS list.

I did suggest dropping Circle to a Line. Here are the reasons I gave on the form:

It’s a Catch 22 call: if you teach it “right” (by the book), dancers have to learn “slide to a line” when they start to dance in public. If you teach “slide to a line”, (a) you?re teaching it “wrong” and (b) your dancers might run up against a group where they do it “right”. It’s not an easy teach, it doesn’t add much variety (at least in the U.S.) and there are plenty of other ways to get into facing lines. Callers have different ways of wording the call (“circle up four, head gents break to a line of four vs. “circle to a line”, etc.)

I’ve gotten to the point where I dread teaching this call (except at the Wilde Bunch, where we long ago gave up any pretense of doing it the “right” way, and unabashedly teach the way virtually everybody dances it).

First, it’s not an easy call to teach, assuming one’s teaching the “right” way. At the Texas Callers School last summer, one of the students talked for about 20 minutes, motivating and explaining the call before starting to teach it. Sure, there are ways to explain it and get dancers through it, including the silly twirl (I like the circle halfway, veer left while the outfacers California Twirl approach). But it always feels like a kluge to me.

Second, there’s the issue of how it’s defined vs. how it’s danced in real life. Recently, at a beginners’ class, I explained the issue to the students and taught them the way it’s danced by the local dancers. Immediately, the angels decided to start dancing it by-the-book, thereby proving me wrong. (Of course, if I had taught it by-the-book, the dancers would have done their usual slide to a line…like I said, it’s a Catch 22.)

I hardly ever use it; when I do, it’s a conscious decision…”oops, I haven’t called Circle to a Line in a while, better throw it in.” I prefer Lead Right, Veer Left, Bend the Line for getting from a squared set to facing lines with partners; if I really need them in sequence, I can add a Right and Left Thru or some equivalent.

In the US, it’s almost never called except after a Heads or Sides Lead Right. Occasionally, it’ll be called after a Centers Pass Thru, although with Plus floors, some squares will inevitably Single Circle to a Wave instead. In the US, it’s never called from any arrangement except normal couples. So it adds little choreographic variety, and it’s an awkward call for the end girl who’s supposed to twirl under (except that she doesn’t, because dancers hardly ever dance it by definition).

So I say, dump it. Some modular callers, who like to start everything from L1P/1P2P/Zero Lines, would need to learn some equivalents…let ’em. My guess is we could just stop calling it and the dancers would never miss it.