Dancing on Campus

Today as a day was pretty uneventful: class, lunch, a nap, and lots of rain. I do hope it clears up by tomorrow night, or at least soon thereafter- rain during Sukkot is rather lousy. This evening was busier: we had our first on campus open dancing. I got there ridiculously early to set up, and although the guy from facilities couldn't get all the lights on, it wasn't too dark to see: just a bit annoying at first. I'd thought that the woman I've been working with from Hillel had speakers for us to use: turns out that she didn't, and she'd forgotten, so randumari was very kind and loaned us his speakers to use for the couple of hours. We had a really nice turnout- 15ish people, which was enough to build some nice energy. Mostly folks who were pretty much beginners, but the enthusiasm for learning new dances and trying things was great. For those following our progress at home, we ended up teaching an awful lot: Eretz Eretz, HaRoah HaKtana, Zodiak and Ohevet Ozevet, besides running over some basic steps: everyone seemed ok with mayim, so we did tcehrkessias, double tcherkessias (not something I usually bother with during real basic steps teaching, but it seemed to work) and yemenites. At the end of the evening we did a handful of harder dances, and we had a few people even willing to follow those, and we got a request to teach Heya Heya next week. It's going to be a high energy group, I think, if we keep these folks: and we had some nicely enthusiastic ones. I also think they'll be willing to try and learn harder dances if they're presented as fun- I think I'd do better to teach a bit faster, barring whatever real easy one I start with. zodiacmg did more of the teaching than I did- he's got more enthusiasm, and while his teaching wasn't exactly accurate (he and I should have a chat about that, and on how to change that), he was good at keeping people involved. I did the programming and the behind the scenes stuff. It worked pretty well. We'll see how dynamics develop as the session goes, but since a good number of the attendees are friends of mine, I doubt I'll have too much of a problem there. I'm looking forward to teaching these folks: there's a lot of potential, and a lot of enthusiasm, and that's always been one of the reasons I like working with beginners. So- high energy dances, lots of line dances, a bunch of oldies, and maybe a chance to start infiltrating some easy debkas soon... As long as I can deal with teh assorted room situations and the quest for speakers, things should go well. More than that- lots of talking, lots more to do, and I should have been asleep hours ago. Oh well.

Dancing on Campus

Today as a day was pretty uneventful: class, lunch, a nap, and lots of rain. I do hope it clears up by tomorrow night, or at least soon thereafter- rain during Sukkot is rather lousy. This evening was busier: we had our first on campus open dancing. I got there ridiculously early to set up, and although the guy from facilities couldn't get all the lights on, it wasn't too dark to see: just a bit annoying at first. I'd thought that the woman I've been working with from Hillel had speakers for us to use: turns out that she didn't, and she'd forgotten, so randumari was very kind and loaned us his speakers to use for the couple of hours. We had a really nice turnout- 15ish people, which was enough to build some nice energy. Mostly folks who were pretty much beginners, but the enthusiasm for learning new dances and trying things was great. For those following our progress at home, we ended up teaching an awful lot: Eretz Eretz, HaRoah HaKtana, Zodiak and Ohevet Ozevet, besides running over some basic steps: everyone seemed ok with mayim, so we did tcehrkessias, double tcherkessias (not something I usually bother with during real basic steps teaching, but it seemed to work) and yemenites. At the end of the evening we did a handful of harder dances, and we had a few people even willing to follow those, and we got a request to teach Heya Heya next week. It's going to be a high energy group, I think, if we keep these folks: and we had some nicely enthusiastic ones. I also think they'll be willing to try and learn harder dances if they're presented as fun- I think I'd do better to teach a bit faster, barring whatever real easy one I start with. zodiacmg did more of the teaching than I did- he's got more enthusiasm, and while his teaching wasn't exactly accurate (he and I should have a chat about that, and on how to change that), he was good at keeping people involved. I did the programming and the behind the scenes stuff. It worked pretty well. We'll see how dynamics develop as the session goes, but since a good number of the attendees are friends of mine, I doubt I'll have too much of a problem there. I'm looking forward to teaching these folks: there's a lot of potential, and a lot of enthusiasm, and that's always been one of the reasons I like working with beginners. So- high energy dances, lots of line dances, a bunch of oldies, and maybe a chance to start infiltrating some easy debkas soon... As long as I can deal with teh assorted room situations and the quest for speakers, things should go well. More than that- lots of talking, lots more to do, and I should have been asleep hours ago. Oh well.