How to practise
You do not need a hall, a caller, or seven other people to make progress between classes. You need ten minutes, and a clear idea of what you are practising.
On your own
Practise the calls you cannot yet do without reading them:
- Read the call page's "What you do" section once. Then close it.
- Walk the call on your own, at a walking pace. A kitchen floor is enough. Say the direction to yourself as you move: "right hand, turn left, side by side".
- Walk it again, three times, the same way. Repetition at home is what turns a call you understand into a call you can do.
- Check the shape you finish in against the call page's ending formation. If you are standing somewhere else, the mistake is in the middle of the call, not at the end.
The tracks figure on each call page is the best way to check a call you are unsure of. It shows where each dancer travels, from the starting board to the ending board, with small dots marking equal fractions of the call. Run your finger along the track that belongs to the dancer you are learning, and walk it. If your feet do not go where the track goes, you have found your error.
Two calls a week is enough to keep up with the course. Five minutes each, four times a week, beats an hour on the night before class.
With a partner
Partner practice is where most of the learning happens, because half of every call is somebody else.
- Take the calls in the class page's teaching sequence order. They are written so each one is easier to absorb than the next.
- Do the drills. Each class page gives short call sequences, and Drills collects them. Dance them slowly, then at speed.
- Practise the handholds. Most beginner errors are hands, not feet: a Star Thru arch at the wrong height, a wave hand offered on the wrong side.
- Swap roles where the call allows it. If you are used to being the dancer who turns left, learn the call from the other side.
If you and your partner can walk a drill through without talking, you know it.
In class
The class is where you learn to dance with seven other people, which is the thing you cannot practise at home. Use it well:
- Stand in a square with people you do not know. It is harder and it is the real thing.
- Listen for the name of the call, not the whole sentence. Callers speak quickly, and the call name is the part that matters. Everything else is decoration.
- When you lose your place, look at the square, not at the caller. Find the shape you should be in and join it. The next call will sort you out.
- Ask the teacher at the break, not during the figure. They are watching eight dancers.
The rules that make all of this work are the same ones the class runs on: the Passing Rule when paths cross, the Squared Set Convention when dancers are not named.
What to practise first
If you only have ten minutes, spend them on the calls you met most recently, and on the ones that put you in a shape you have to recognise — waves, columns and lines. Those are where beginners get lost, and they are the shapes the rest of the program is built on.
Next
- a graded set of figures → Drills
- what a whole tip feels like → Dancing a tip