Lifeguard Nick

(Originally printed in the GCA Call Sheet in 1998)

In this series of articles, I will share with you some of the things I’ve learned in the short seven years I’ve been behind the microphone - part theory; part hands-on. I’ll continue the series until I run out of useful things to share or until someone gets bored and threatens me with bodily harm should I continue. For those not interested in becoming a caller these articles will give you a peek behind the scenes.

The first bit of wisdom I want to share comes from the first Callers School I attended at the Miami Convention in 1991. Joe Uebelacker was talking about attitude. What he basically told us was that if you’re not going into calling for the sake of the dancers, do something else! You can have the best voice, best sound system, and best choreography in the world. If the dancers don’t show up, the voice, sound system and choreography are literally useless - they won’t get used!

Square dance calling is a ‘people’ activity. If the people like you, you win - you get contracts - you get calling dates. If the people don’t like you, you’ve just spent years perfecting a product that nobody wants to buy! But here’s some good news - the dancers want you to win! They’re not in competition with you - they want you to do a good job for them! I have seen new callers step up to the microphone and win the audience’s heart even though they never get through a figure correctly - can’t seem to find that blasted corner. I’ve also seen callers do a letter perfect job and lose the audience almost before they can say "Bow to your partner." What makes the difference? Attitude, more specifically your attitude toward the dancers. If you’re nice and sincerely trying to do a good job, the dancers will pick up on it. They will do their best to get through (and help you get through) your choreography. But if your idea of calling is standing at the microphone allowing the unwashed masses to bask in the glory that is you - you’re sunk! You will experience the longest, coldest, loneliest moments of your life waiting for that tip or dance to end!

As a caller, you will get to know all sizes, shapes and types of people. You will be humbled when you step off of the stage and get to know their personal stories. I know of a group of dancers in the North Jersey area who have become a support group to each other - within the past few years, one spouse in each couple has been hospitalized with a major illness and battled back to rejoin their friends on the dance floor. They celebrate the passing of another year together with an annual picnic. The gay community certainly has no shortage of heroic stories. This knowledge of personal history puts your work as an entertainer into a new perspective. Whether the dancer screwed up your fancy choreography is a grandfather who just came back after a hip replacement or someone who is helping a lover through AIDS or breast cancer, knowing their story makes you a little more forgiving.

You will spend hours and hours perfecting your craft. Keep the end in sight - bringing that craft to the people. The people will be judge and jury. They want you to win. Give them your best. Good Luck!

Basics of Choreography by Nick Martellacci

Your goal as a caller is entertain the people in front of you by dancing them into and out of formations using the calls of any given program with one of three possible outcomes: (1) all dancers are back at home where they started (or 1/4 away for a final ‘stir the bucket’); (2) all dancers are in sequence facing their corners for an Allemande Left; or (3) all dancers are in sequence facing their partners for a Right and Left Grand. Your job as a choreographer is to move the dancers as smoothly and painlessly as possible while keeping the combinations of calls interesting. (‘In sequence’ means that when promenading home, none of the couples has to pass in front of another couple to wind up at the proper spot.)

Things You’ll Need to Get Started: Get yourself some paper and pencils, a set of checkers, a Callerlab Formation Sheet, and the Callerlab Lists that you want to call (Golden Rule #1 NEVER try to call a program you don’t dance!!) Checkers are chips, checkers or dolls that you move as you write your choreography. You can make your own. Make sure you indicate on the checker who that checker represents (Sex/Couple) and which way the dancer is facing.

Re-Learning the Calls - When you learned how to dance Mainstream, you learned how to move your hands and feet. Now, as a caller/choreographer, you must go beyond that limited knowledge. You must know the legal positions from which to start a call; what hand (if any) needs to be free to execute a call; the number of beats of music it takes to dance the call; which way the body is traveling; the ending formation after the call has been completed and what hand is free to do the next call. Oh yes, you must do this for both the boys and girls parts!! What do I mean? Let’s talk about two common caller errors:

Star Thru + Veer Left: For the boy, no problem - great body flow. Both calls have you moving in the same direction. But for the girls - YUCK! Star Thru has the girls moving to the right. In order to Veer Left, the girls have to make an abrupt reversal of direction.

Square Thru 4 + Star Thru: Starting with either Heads or Sides from a static square, the boys have no problem with this combination. After square thru their right hands are free and naturally moving forward. Unfortunately, after square thru 4, the girls left hands are behind them, having just finished the final ‘pull by.’ Slide Thru is much easier to dance after Square Thru 4. (Yes, you’re right! On the first night of lessons, I do call this combination. I don’t have too many other calls to play with at this stage in the game. Sometimes I break things up with a Do Sa Do. Remember this: in classes and workshops, you can get away with poor choreography you would never use at a dance in order to get people to a quick Allemande Left. You should always strive for smooth choreo even at lessons but don’t waste too much the dancer’s time by always trying to resolve every figure artistically.)

Start with Basic/Mainstream and create a worksheet for every call on the list: Starting Formation; Ending Formation; Action (definition); Timing; Body Flow; Hand(s) Free after Call. Do this same exercise for every program you call - all the way through C4!! If you do your homework now, you won’t fall in love with interesting combinations of call which don’t dance well. Who knows, you may even come to hate Swap Around and Cross & Turn as much as I do!

Formation Management: Now that you know how the calls work, you need to start putting them into context. This exercise, developed taught by caller named a Deuce Williams, also starts you thinking about CREATIVE choreography. Open to a blank page in your work book. At the top of the page write the name of a formation, e.g. Facing Lines. Draw a line down the center of the page. Down the left hand side of the page, write every call on the current list which can legally be called from this starting position. Down the right hand side of the page, write the ending formation had you called the call on the left, e.g. from facing lines, if you call Right and Left Thru, you end up with facing lines; if you call pass the Ocean, you end up with parallel Right-handed Ocean Waves, etc.

These two exercises will keep you busy for a while. Next time I’ll share with you some of the advice that was given to me over the last seven years. Good Luck!

Let Him (Her) Who Has Ears to Hear... by Nick Martellacci

The two people who had the most impact on my most early days of calling were Chick Chickering, then President of the Times Squares, and Sheldon Green, archangel of my Mainstream Class. Two rules I remember are "Introduce yourself to every caller who comes through the club and ask what advice they’d offer a new caller" and "Dance to the best callers you can." In this article, I will share with you some of the pearls of wisdom I got from following Rule #1.

The first piece of advice comes from Todd Fellegy: "If you like to dance, don’t become a caller!!" He didn’t expand upon it so I will. First, when you start calling dances, you will get onto the ‘circuit.’ As you spend more and more time preparing for and calling dances, you have less and less time to actually get out on the floor and dance. Second, as a professional, I try to analyze what a caller is doing while I’m dancing. If (s)he does something interesting with a call or formation, I try to remember it and write it down after the tip so I can use it later. (No, that’s not stealing, that’s RESEARCHing!!) Were I ‘just a dancer’, I’d simply enjoy the tip and wait for the next.

The next piece of advice comes from Pete Diven: "Call what you know." Once again, I’ll offer two interpretations of this advice. First, if you don’t know how to get OUT of a formation using the calls of a program, don’t put the dancers INto it!! Second, make sure your material works! Run your checkers through it several times. Get a square of some friends to try it out in your living room.

A very interesting piece of advice came from Glenn Matthew - "If you’re serious about becoming a caller get away from (beyond) the gay clubs." Glenn, club caller for Independence Squares, certainly has a good reputation with the northeast gay clubs. He also has a large following in the straight community. His comment is NOT anti-gay. He’s speaking purely as a business person. If you are serious about becoming a caller, you will invest a great deal of time and money (education, equipment, records, costumes, etc.). If you’re happy calling one guest tip at a fly-in or an occasional club night, you can skip Glenn’s advice.

As for Chick and Sheldon’s Rule #2, I would say "Dance to EVERYONE you can." If you liked what (s)he did, what was it that you liked? Their voice, the speed, the flow, the choreography, the rapport with the audience? If you did NOT like the caller - what was it that you didn’t like? Were you the only one in the room who felt that way? Was it simply that you couldn’t see yourself doing the same thing? Now that you are getting into the craft of calling, every dance can be a lesson.

Good Luck!

The Louse and the Robin (A Fable) by Nick Martellacci

Back in my days studying music at West Chester State College (now University, thank you very much!), I had the opportunity to sing under several conductors. I will now tell the tale of two of these conductors: Lois (a.k.a. Louse) Williams and Robin Frenz. Both of these talented women were able to blend 150 voices into a beautiful ensemble capable of performing the great works of the choral repertoire. At the end of each semester the audience was treated to a spectacular concert. The difference? After working with the tyrannical Ms. Willliams and her ever-flailing pencil, we all hated her. After working with Ms. Frenz, we wanted to erect a statue of her in the town square! She was able to conduct a room full of musicians with her eyes and the gentle sway of her Reubenesque frame!

What does this have to do with becoming a square dance caller? Well, the original title of this article was "Are you a good diva or a bad diva?" The title was cute and catchy and best of all paraphrased the Wizard of Oz. BUT the word diva (from the Latin for "goddess") has so many negative overtones, I would be wrong letting you think that you could build a calling career by acting like a little Louse!

"What?" you gasp in disbelief, "a square dance caller who’s a diva?!? Impossible!" Believe it or not, many things in the day to day life of a caller can breed diva-ism even in the most centered (how Zen!) of us.

You, as a new caller, will spend hundreds of hours preparing before you ever get a chance to step into the spotlight and call your first dance. Since you can’t call that same dance for the rest of your career, the hours of preparation continue. These hours of monastic seclusion make the caller all the more hungry for that precious time in the spotlight. Add into the mix the fact that square dancing did not begin when you first picked up a microphone - there were lots of other callers out there already calling dances. You’ve spent all this time preparing and preparing and now - you have to wait your turn. In order to survive these countless hours NOT enjoying the spotlight, you need a healthy ego which will keep you going until you get your "big break." This same ego strength, if used for evil instead of good can result in your becoming a diva.

OK, you’re now on the circuit calling dances for local clubs. You’ve appeared at a regional festival or two. Suddenly, people are coming up and asking for your autograph for their Century Books. They’re asking to have their picture taken with you. They help you carry your equipment to and from your car. They’re frantic if they get to the hall and you’re not set up and ready to call at least 1/2 hour before the dance starts. They offer to bring you coffee. They drive back to Brooklyn when you’ve forgotten your record case before a big dance!! Once again, this type of treatment by dancers and club officers can feed that nasty diva lurking in the dark recesses of your psyche.

But no matter how often your ‘inner diva’ is fed and stroked, you must constantly keep the little monster at bay. Diva-ism is just plain bad for business. Even though you’ve invented the square dance equivalent of the ‘better mouse trap,’ if dealing with you becomes a constant pain in their nether regions club officers and dancers won’t want to be bothered. In other words, if you let your ‘inner diva’ run your career for you, you won’t get booked even if you ARE better than so-and-so who did get hired to call!

Lous... Lois Williams had all of the bad attributes of a diva - temperamental, infuriating, demanding etc. The fact that she got good results did not redeem her. Why? Because two studios away on that same row of offices sat Robin Frenz - equally talented, equally capable of the same results but infinitely more user-friendly. And so, dear reader, will you be a Louse or a Robin? The choice is yours.

Good Luck!