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Workshops and walkthroughs . . .
Ron Mackey
Jan. 28, 2006, 12:58 a.m. (Message 43890)
There are, obviously, diferent ideas behind the organization of the various 'workshops'. In this neck of the woods we have 'weekends' which consist of dances on the Friday and Saturday nights, classes on Saturday and Sunday mornings and 'social' dancing before tea on the Sunday afternoon before people filter away home. The Saturday dance is often more fomal and receives other non-attending dancers. The classes are usually based on what the particular teacher has buzzing in their bonnet at the time. If there are two teachers/classes they will communicate so as not to overlap unduly. The Saturday afternoon 'workshop' is usually a specialist view of SCD, an attempt at some really difficult dances or even an attempt at some other quite different form of dance. One of the published evening dances just might be included, as a special request, during a class or workshop (if suitable) but as the programmes are published well in advance it is assumed that applicants for tickets attendance will do their own homework. To assist with this, these days, dances are normally talked through before the chord. We see from Anselm's mail that there is a practise before the Frankfurt Ball and that seems reasonable but if there is a great demand for such a thing before a normal large dance with guests coming from afar then it seems that the programme needs to be examined. I always was under the impression that the more difficult/new dances should only be included in local dances where local classes could practise them, these to be 'promoted' when they became more universally known. Larger affairs should confine themselves to more universally known and popular dances and the number of these is rapidly growing so choice should not be too limiting. I think this was part of the thinking behind Diana Shipton's list and could also be part of the reason for the new pop list proposal from HQ?
Ron Mackey wrote: > We see from Anselm's mail that there is a practise before the > Frankfurt Ball and that seems reasonable but if there is a great demand > for such a thing before a normal large dance with guests coming from > afar then it seems that the programme needs to be examined. When I started dancing, the Frankfurt ball used to be feared for its eclectic collections of weird and wonderful dances (some of which were fairly obscure). Note that we're talking German programmes here, which are already more eclectic than those found in, say, Scotland. We have worked very hard over the last decade or so to get rid of this image, but the pre-ball afternoon mini-workshop (or what you might call it) has stuck with us even though our programmes are now on the simple side of what is usual hereabouts. Even so many dancers welcome it as a chance to try the two or three more challenging bits that we sneak in the programme, and many of the people who come to the ball are ones who for professional reasons or other find themselves unable to attend our (or any) weekly class, so are glad of a refresher. The third reason is that, having taken upon themselves the inconvenience of travel, people come to the afternoon session not because they are desperate for a last-minute brush-up but simply because they want to get as much dancing out of the weekend as possible. The turnout in the afternoon is usually a third or half the number of people who attend in the evening, which proves both that there is reasonable demand for the afternoon session, and that many people find it feasible to come for the evening *without* the extra tuition in the afternoon. > Larger affairs should confine themselves to more > universally known and popular dances and the number of these is > rapidly growing so choice should not be too limiting. On our ball programmes we try for a sensible mixture of well-known and not-so-well-known-but-straightforward (i.e., fairly obvious from diagrams, which many people use for teaching even though they oughtn't) dances. Usually at least the last third of the programme is from the well-known-RSCDS and nearly-canonical-non-RSCDS repertoire, so people can let their hair down towards the end of the evening. It turns out that some of the more unusual dances that we have put on our programmes then show up on other subsequent programmes, so while there is no official set of favourites it appears that people like them and take them home, at least for a while. Anselm -- Anselm Lingnau, Frankfurt, Germany ..................... xxxxxx@xxxxxxxxxx.xxx Software engineering as a field is a lot like psychology as a field. That is, there is real science/engineering being done, but there is also a lot of pop stuff that's only one step above astrology. -- Tim Smith