[Squaredancing] Re: Community Dance Program

[squarekopp at gmx.de]

Mike Gormley wrote:
>>>
I would be interested in hearing comments from anyone on the list who has
tried Callerlab's Community Dance Program.
<<<

There is a CDP since I am a member of CALLERLAB. Seriously, I became a
member at the 1986 convention in Baltimore, and at the same convention, the
basic ideas for the CDP were concieved and presented.

Since then, I had a CDP group going in Hannover. It alway was a small group,
and MWSDancers look with disdain at it. But this does not prevent us from
dancing.

It is organized as "Open Square Dance", i.e. new partizipants are welcome at
the start of every evening. (Alas, happened rarely in the past year.) If new
people show up, I teach them the dosado, swing, and allemande left. Circle
and star are self-evident. Then in the course of the evening, I show either
Ladies Chain, or Right & Left Thru, and use only this for that day. And I
use a lot of contra dancing. With contras, you do not need seven other
people to dance; when you found a partner, that ´s enough. And if somebody
is left over, I can jump in.

Since the females by far outnumber the males, I bring a bag of blue ribbons
to indicate those ladies who dance the gent´s part.

Anyone who needs singing call figures for the CDP, can find three dozen at
http://www.heinerfischle.de/caller/cdp-sing.htm

Since there is no Square Thru in the CDP, but 50% of the "usual" singing
call figures start out with a Square Thru 4, these figures might be a
surprise even at a MS or Plus dance.

Yours squarely
Heiner Fischle, der Squarekopp
Hannover, Germany
http://www.heinerfischle.de
(bilingual)