Square dancing as show business…
I read lots of stuff. Sometimes, I can’t stop reading. If I’m reading a novel, I really focus on it, and little else. If I’m reading about anything else, I can have several books going at once. It lets me process the material from one subject while I’m engulfed in another.
One of the books I’m reading now is called The Imagineering Way: Ideas to Ignite Your Creativity. It is a short book by the Imagineers at the Walt Disney Corporation. It’s full of all sorts of tidbits. Some are the usual creativity and leadership stuff, but there are some real nuggets in there.
On page 169 is this quote: “What we do is a kind of art-we’re in show business, like it or not. The guests pay to be entertained. Our product must include caring an passion, not just formulatic cold procedure.”
This is so true of what we do as square dance callers. I, as a dance leader, could memorize the rules of the dance and just spit them back out week after week. It’d be just like reading to people. Or, I can study my craft, and put together a dance reads like a story.
A story that has a beginning, a middle, and an end. A story that has a young hero saving someone in distress, that overcomes all odds, and is victorious at the end. Best of all, it is a story that has a soundtrack.
I may be a story teller, but the heroes of my story are my dancers. Their foe? The unknown and uncertain.
In contra dancing, the dance leader has to do their best to stay out of the way of the dancers. The contra caller must let the dance speak for itself. In modern western square dancing, the caller has much more to do. Sometimes, callers do too much and the dance falls apart. When the caller does too little, the dance never comes together.
The best callers I know are, indeed, artists. They deliver their stories while managing so many other things. Those things include the music selection, music speed, and the music volume. Don’t forget the speed and timing of the delivery of the calls. Then there’s the opening of the show to consider. Someone has to welcome everyone and, if you welcome them, you have to bid them farewell. Finally, there are all of those little intermissions where we meet/greet everyone and tell the occasional side story and even offer a little levity.
There’s so much to think about that it’s hard to think at all. However, like that quote from above, there must be passion. Without it, the dance is cold and sterile. No matter what program you call or dance, there must be at least a little fire. Otherwise, what’s the point?
What a dance needs is Feedback. A good joke is wasted on a deaf person if it is spoken and you can’t even read the lips. Without audience feedback a comedian is dead in the water! When all of Square Dancing comes from the caller, it takes to much effort and the joy is hard to come by! When the dancers can’t give a caller feedback because the Puzzle is where all the entertainment is, and you need to hear every word, and analyse every call, then the people will never reach that high that made Square Dancing what it used to be.
If a caller can’t draw that feedback out of the audience they will have second rate Dancing! To much of what we have today is the thrill of memorizing a bunch of movements! It’s like going to a comedian who tells the same jokes, but in a different order! The first week it’s funny, the next time not so funny. To much Square Dancing entertainment is the Puzzle anymore! You can’t even feel the music, and the dancers rush the calls to make sure they don’t mess up the puzzle! Darn the MUSIC and FULL SPEED AHEAD!