Social Square Dancing Startup Suggestions
Calvin
Programs such as Social Square Dancing provide a way to start a new groups of people dancing. The whole list of the SSD basics is 50 calls and is to taught in 15 weeks. That not be practical. Particularly the last five or six calls will never have enough reps to be adequately learned.
A second problem may be that the starting class may be small. A solution to this problems is to not try and teach all 50 basics on the list. Teach what seems to be acceptable to your students and let the dancers have fun and then send out the students to recruit their friends.
The time a new student is the most enthusiastic occurs about square dancing is about the 3rd or 4th lesson. It might be time to tell the participants to go out and get their friends and start over again. The current students will enjoy a review
If necessary, this process could be repeated several times. A competent caller should know enough dance routines that he or she could provide different material. You are working with a new population of dancers.
As you do this, I encourage the caller to teach timing from the first night of lessons. Start teaching styling as soon as they understand timing. The students will have fun teaching each other how to do both.
I also encourage an effort to have the students bond with the caller and with each other. Have the group do some mixers or maybe a simple line dance. See if they are willing to go out and eat someplace before or after the lessons.
Notice that I have not mentioned this is a club. It’s just a dance. I have not mentioned officers. It’s just a dance. You will find that some people will want to assist the caller. Make certain that the caller (you) is the leader. People want to belong to a social group. A name for the group will eventually come from the group.
The SSD list is meant for the time when there are several SSD clubs in a geographic area. It is only important when the time arrives to try and hold a dance combining all the clubs. That could take years. In the meantime, don’t get in a hurry.
Since the real purpose is to have fun, don’t even feel you need to teach the whole list. Just get together with the other callers and pick what calls you want to use for that dance.
The teaching order is also not important. We all have our own teaching order just like we have our own flow modules. The way to even out the floor is to walk thru anything where the dancers may have a problem. The dancers would rather have fun than to fail.