[ABC] ABC and the 50 Call Program

[Joe Dehn]

On 10/3/2013 5:28 AM, JERRYSTORY at aol.com wrote:
> To clarify, there are reasons that differences exist on each of the 
> different lists.  There are several reasons of which I'm sure would 
> certainly include teaching, philosophy, new dancers, etc.  Discussing 
> and understanding these reasons can do nothing but help us come up 
> with a smaller but very solid program.

I would love to hear the people who came up with these lists discuss why 
they made the choices that they did.  Just from looking at the lists 
themselves, once one gets beyond the "obvious" deletions of things that 
everybody seems to think are relatively worthless, it's often hard to 
tell why particular calls were chosen.

> I would prefer to cooperatively work on THE list now.  We are not get 
> any younger! :-)  How much longer can we experiment?  A list is a list 
> is a list.  There is plenty of teaching experience aboard on this 
> project.  We can come up with a coordinated list of calls and, if need 
> be, tweak it as we move forward.  Why not have everyone on the same 
> plane?  Why wait?

I have no problem with people working on trying to come up with a better 
list.  (But maybe I am confused about what you mean by "this project" -- 
what project?  I responded to a message posted on the ABC list.  Is that 
what you mean?)  All I meant was that I don't think people should be 
_waiting_ for any sort of agreement before trying to make use of this 
general approach in their own area.  And personally, I don't see the 
lack of a list as the key problem.  We already have several lists that 
people can use, some of which have been around for many years -- and 
most people aren't using any of them.

> The RGV 50 and the ECTO are really not that far apart.  I see teaching 
> differences and a bit of philosophy differences. The RGV list does 
> appear bigger but it is mostly things like Forward and Back, Balance, 
> Separates, Step to a Wave, Wrong Way Grand, etc.  These do increase 
> the number but increase teach time very little.

I agree that there are a lot of differences among these lists that 
aren't very important, and counting them in or out doesn't mean much for 
teaching time.  That's one reason I don't consider characterizing the 
lists simply by the number of calls to be very useful.  Leaving "Step to 
a Wave" off the "list" doesn't save any time, since we have to explain 
what a "wave" is anyway plus we have to tell them about stepping to a 
wave when doing Swing Thru from facing couples. Whether we count that 
action as a "call" or not makes no difference to the dancers.

But I see quite a few more significant differences between those two 
lists.  RGV50 includes Chain Down the Line, Circle to a Line, Cross Run, 
Wheel and Deal from 2-faced lines, First/Next Couple Go Left/Right, 
Centers In, and Tag / 1/2 Tag the Line, all of which require explicit 
teaching because their meaning is not obvious to a new dancer just from 
the words of the name, and several of these are actions that many 
beginners have trouble getting even after they have been explained.  
None of these taken separately is all _that_ hard to teach, but taken 
together they could easily add several weeks to the total teaching time.

Also, the two lists take directly opposite positions on the whole 
"arches are fun" / "arches hurt my arm" question (RGV 50 includes Dive 
Thru, Box the Gnat, Star Thru while ECTO has Pass to the Center, Single 
Circle to a Wave, Slide Thru) -- this doesn't change the total "size" or 
teaching time, but it certainly makes the lists different from a 
dancer's perspective and it's hard to see how these differences can be 
"meshed" without somehow resolving that difference in outlook, which may 
in turn be based on very real differences in what callers are trying to 
do with the list (specifically, the age of the dancers with whom they 
expect to be working).  How do you propose to approach that question?