This weekend, I drove to Denver to call for the Rocky Mountain Rainbeaus. After a slight delay (45 minutes!!) in getting in to the venue (MCCR), we danced A2 and C1, had a dinner break (pizza in the church, since we got started so late), and danced Plus/A2 the rest of the evening. I always enjoy calling for the Rainbeaus; they’re a fun group.

I did the Levi Jackson Rag with them, and got a good response. The last time I tried it (with the Duke City Singles), the dancers had a few problems. This time, I left it at the recorded speed (about 129 bpm) and the dancers had no problems; it was fun to watch them get through it.

Driving to Denver takes (I hope there are no highway patrol folks reading) about 6.5 hours, interstate all the way, much of it flat, with not much traffic. So, I had a lot of time in the car, which I spent listening to tapes from previous CALLERLAB conventions. (I don’t have this year’s yet; I ordered them as MP3 files on a CD, and won’t get them for a couple of weeks. But just think: one CD with all the sessions, as opposed to 16 cassettes for 16 sessions, for less money.) There’s a lot of repetition, but also a lot of good info.

In an interesting juxtaposition, I listened to a tape from last year, with Jerry Junck (note to Jerry: jerryjunck.com is available as a domain name…why not grab it?) and Tony Oxendine talking about “Different Not Difficult”, and a tape from 1992 on successful choreography, also featuring Tony and Jerry (along with Bronc Wise and Jack O’Leary). In 1992, the callers assumed that the dancers wanted interesting and challenging choreography. Jerry talked about categorizing call usage as easy, medium, or hard. Jack mostly did gimmicks. Bronc talked about knowing the calls really well in order to develop interesting usages. He also stressed lots of checker-work. The discussion evolved around to dancing in Sweden and other European countries, and how the dancers there could do anything. In 2002, the focus was on providing something a little different, and making it easy by working the dancers up to it. For example, Tony had a sequence that he wanted to use: Heads Left Square Thru 4, Left Touch 1/4, Walk and Dodge, Wheel Around, Dixie Style to a Wave, Swing Thru, Chain Down the Line, Slide Thru (ZB). He described how he would spend the whole dance giving the dancers the skills needed to get through this sequence. Jerry also had a (substantially easier, but no longer MS) sequence: Heads Square Thru, Touch 1/4, Scoot Back, Split Circulate, Cast Off 3/4, Fan the Top, Right and Left Thru, Slide Thru (ZB) that he would use as a basis for several tips.