pennsicdance: Real (as opposed to meta-) topics

[Matthew Fleming]

> (2) There was a clear nightly goal.  The list of dances was broken up
> *before-hand* into nightly lists of what *had* to get taught (though
> invariably there was plenty of time for other things).

This really depends on whether you want to have a known set list each
night, or want to do mostly requests.  Some people seem to prefer the
all request, some like the structure.

The idea of trying to ensure all the ball dances are done in a night
is a bit large; the ball takes a few hours and has no teaching at all!
But one could make sure the more common dances from the ball are done,
even in a request-based system.  This is a good thing to mix in with
dance classes during the day that teach the ball dances.

> (3) There was a clear leader each night, and it was a different person
> each night.  People signed up (again, before-hand) to take charge of
> each night.

This is a big help.  I don't know how a dance-master for each night
was arrived at last year, but this is something I think we all want to
have.

> (4) Each leader had a set of 2-4 other dance-masters who had
> volunteered to help out that night, and on whom they could count for
> various things.
> 
> (3) and (4) together ended up meaning that the 3-5 teachers would
> trade off teaching the easier dances, and for the harder ones, they
> would break up the floor, each take a small number of sets, and teach
> them more individually.

Again, this is a big help, and should be a goal of this coming year.
Anything harder than a bransle takes a while to teach when you have 1
person teaching several sets (at least at war).  One teacher per set
will make the teaching go faster, and so we get more dancing.

The after-midnight OOP thing doesn't always seem to be followed.  I
think this depended on the individuals in charge each night.  I would
like to see this be a more firm thing, because there are some who
really don't like to be around when the OOP dances are done.

Cheers,
Matt
-- 
Matthew D. Fleming                   http://www.cs.cornell.edu/fleming
Dancer, gamer, Macintosh and Linux fan.         fleming at cs.cornell.edu

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