Reversing Directions to Move Forwards

Sharon L. Pedersen

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Feb 15, 1995, 6:11:30 PM2/15/95

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The 3rd Saturday dance I call in Belfast (Maine) is picking up
momentum; my goal is to teach well, include all comers, and provide
energetic dancing to great music.

I had an interesting experience calling there last month: there were a
lot of newcomers, and I was calling simpler dances so as not to lose
them. The crowd seemed to be struggling with the simpler dances, so I
was loath to call more complex dances.

Then I called Tony Parkes' "Spring Fever" (always a winner) and the
crowd perked right up. At the break, one of the more experienced
dancers asked me to call more complex dances: she said, "We'll help
the beginners through."

So I did, and sure enough, the dances went much much better, and
everyone, including the newcomers, danced well and had a blast. What
had happened is, the experienced dancers weren't engaged by the
simpler dances, and were sleepwalking through them, and could barely
help themselves, let alone newcomers. But when I started calling more
complex dances, the experienced dancers woke up, started paying
attention, dancing with energy, and this gave the newcomers exactly
the help they needed!

Anyone else have examples of surprising negative feedback loops like
this? Places where to go forwards you have to reverse direction? Or
even move orthogonally, focussing on something else entirely?

--Sharon Pedersen pede...@polar.bowdoin.edu (Brunswick, Maine)

Jonathan Sivier

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Feb 16, 1995, 11:02:08 AM2/16/95

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"Sharon L. Pedersen" <pede...@grizzly.bowdoin.edu> writes:

[description of a group including many newcomers doing better with more
complex dances]

It has been my experience that dancers will many times dance up (or down)
to your expectations. If your attitude is "Here's a dance I know you'll like
and I know you'll be able to do it" then more often than not they'll do fine.
If your attitute is "I think this dance is to hard for you" then it often is.

Jonathan

Jim Saxe

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Feb 16, 1995, 3:48:33 PM2/16/95

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In article <950215230...@grizzly.bowdoin.edu> "Sharon L. Pedersen"
<pede...@grizzly.bowdoin.edu> writes:
>... But when I started calling more

>complex dances, the experienced dancers woke up, started paying
>attention, dancing with energy, and this gave the newcomers exactly
>the help they needed!
>
>Anyone else have examples of surprising negative feedback loops like
>this? Places where to go forwards you have to reverse direction? Or
>even move orthogonally, focussing on something else entirely?

Here are a few.

* Perky tempos inspire perky movement and may get dancers to finish
figures on time while slow tempos, which one might naively think would
give them more time, may result in plodding movement, making the
dancers late. (Of course raising tempos, like raising the complexity
level in Sharon's original example, has a negative influence after a
certain point).

* Raising your voice to be heard over the crowd noise usually just
gets people talking louder. Lowering your voice is more likely to get
their attention. (To keep it, you'd better say stuff that they
consider worth listening to.)

* A succinct teaching style that implies dancers are expected to pay
attention will teach them to pay attention. An example from ECD:
First corners: set towards each other (musician plays setting music),
turn single to place (musician plays turn single music), and turn
each other by two hands once around, falling back to place (band
play music for two-hand turn).
Second corners, do all that (band plays repeat of music, while
teacher refrains from prompting unless it is absolutely necessary).

* Conversely, wordy explanations, even if they allow more precision,
can lose the dancers' attention. In particular wordy explanations of
conventional figures can get dancers thinking that you must mean
something complicated.

* [From an example once posted to r.f-d by Dan Pearl] Musical emphasis
during a balance might help get the dancers all balancing together at
the right time, but four beats of silence might work even better.

* Finally, here's a lateral thinking example: You're about to start
walking through a square dance. You see a square near the back of the
hall with a pair of beginners squared up half-sashayed (man on the
right, woman on the left). You say, "Make sure the man is on the left
and the woman is on the right in each couple." Nothing happens. You
say it again. Nothing happens, except the level of conversational
buzz goes up. You notice an experienced couple standing next to your
two beginners; they are talking with each other, oblivious to their
mispositioned neighbors. You say, "Make sure that the other couples
in your square have the man on the left and the woman on the right."
The buzz gets louder. You think about saying, "You in the blue plaid
shirt, ..." but think better of it. Then lateral thinking kicks in,
and you say something like, "Everybody do-si-do your corner!" or "All
join hands and circle left!"

--Jim Saxe

Nancy Mamlin

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Feb 19, 1995, 9:59:16 PM2/19/95

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In article <3hvsu0$l...@vixen.cso.uiuc.edu>,

Jonathan Sivier <jsi...@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu> wrote:
>"Sharon L. Pedersen" <pede...@grizzly.bowdoin.edu> writes:
>
>[description of a group including many newcomers doing better with more
> complex dances]
>
> It has been my experience that dancers will many times dance up (or down)
>to your expectations. If your attitude is "Here's a dance I know you'll like
>and I know you'll be able to do it" then more often than not they'll do fine.
>If your attitute is "I think this dance is to hard for you" then it often is.

Several truths here....
First, (this is officially sanctioned knowledge in the field of
education), learners will in fact perform better the more that is expected
of them. To a point. As teachers (and callers count, here), the trick is
to know that point. You *can* challenge folks. They'll get it.

Also, nothing we do is *really* all that hard. (Old thread alert).... I
once was having trouble teaching a dance, and so I had the dancers come
back home. I said "I forgot to tell you. This dance is *easy*." Then
they got it.

Nancy "I went to KNoxville twice this weekend" Mamlin
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Lise Dyckman

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Feb 21, 1995, 2:21:52 PM2/21/95

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I've really appreciated the comments by Jim Saxe, Jonathon Sivier, Nancy
Mamlin, et al. on, essentially, learning theory and dancing. But Sharon
Pedersen makes a really important point in her original posting.
In <950215230...@grizzly.bowdoin.edu> "Sharon L. Pedersen"
<pede...@grizzly.bowdoin.edu> writes:

> ...

>Then I called Tony Parkes' "Spring Fever" (always a winner) and the
>crowd perked right up. At the break, one of the more experienced
>dancers asked me to call more complex dances: she said, "We'll help
>the beginners through."
>So I did, and sure enough, the dances went much much better, and
>everyone, including the newcomers, danced well and had a blast. What
>had happened is, the experienced dancers weren't engaged by the
>simpler dances, and were sleepwalking through them, and could barely
>help themselves, let alone newcomers. But when I started calling more
>complex dances, the experienced dancers woke up, started paying
>attention, dancing with energy, and this gave the newcomers exactly
>the help they needed!

In my (lord, over two-thirds of my life!) experience in social dancing,
I've seen over and over that we learn far more from the dancers around
us than from we learn from the person at the top of the hall who is
telling us what to do. And the callers we (collectively) dance best with
manage to engage those who have some dance experience to enlist them to
"teach" newcomers without falling into the authoritarian trap of the
caller telling/ordering the core dancers to include new ones. Another
old thread, back in a slightly different guise?

Lise M. Dyckman
ldy...@ix.netcom.com

Cliff Rainey

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Mar 1, 1995, 10:12:34 AM3/1/95

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Lise- I enjoyed your comments. It takes an inspired leader to call and
allow help from the floor...at the same time. But overall, it's the
music and "community" that makes a GREAT dance!
--Cliff Rainey