Signs make you dance better!
Well, maybe not, but I thought they added to the ambience.
Sunday we had our second "AFTERNOON OF VINTAGE & TRADITIONAL COUPLE DANCING"
http://www.facebook.com/?ref=tn_tnmn#!/pages/Vintage-and-Traditional-Social-Dancing-in-the-Delaware-Valley/135758283110094
I didn't post anything after our first because even though I think people liked it, it was an exhausting experience to run. This time we utilized the technolgy much better and it was much more pleasurable. We are still coping with the learning curve for being DJ's and proctors, but beginning to see the light at the end of the tunnel. I expect our next one will go as smoothly and won't take as much prep time.
Seriously, I had no idea how much work this would be. I think it took us between 30 and 40 hours to put together a 2.5 hour playlist for the dance. That includes copying music from CDs, listening to it for tempo and "dancebility", running it through another program to change tempos for some of them, labelling it as to what dance form, and then arranging it all into a program so the fast ones were spread out and not all in a lump. It is amazing how much music that is billed as "suitable for dancing" is too fast or goes all mushy and wonky for a repeat in the middle of the song, or just changes tempo in some annoying fashion partway through. Not to mention being mislabelled as to which dance it is supposed to be. It seems orchestras really have no clue as to the tempo difference between schottiches, polkas and two-steps.
The lesson was not difficult to prepare, as we have a file of lessons for beginners that we have been tecahing for years. All I had to do was go the dance manuals and find a couple of rarely seen figures to add on to the end of the lesson so that people who aren't beginners will have something new to them.
Our implicit theme for the first three dances has been "Ragtime". We picked this because One-step is the easiest dance to get beginners moving on. Also, April is the 100th aniversary of the Titanic, so we thought dances from that area would be nice. Next month's lesson is Vintage Tango. I am really looking forward to that because I have done lots of research on that topic and really love it. Also, we have had good response to tangos, so far. At many dances, most people sit out the tangos, but has not happened for us. I have been telling people that it's just a one-step with attitude, and that seems to have made them comfortable with it.