NOTE: For the last couple of years, the resident cook/chef Ivy and her team have been providing meals available prior to the social. The prices are very reasonable and the food delicious. However the support for these meals is inconsistent and is not proving particularly viable for them. She has decided to continue the meals for the rest of this year, but will not continue next year. If you want it to continue, please join us from midday.
ALSO NOTE: If you bring food/nibbles to the venue, please be discreet about it and don't put it on the table till the kitchen has closed as a sign of respect to Ivy's cooking.
NEXT YEAR: We may be running a Sunday Evening Social on the 3rd March for some visiting USA line dancers, so put it in your diary just in case.

We are in Instructor holiday season. Even if your regular instructor is away, please support the relief instructor as it is a difficult task to look after someone else's class, and they are going out of their way to do so.
The following changes are happening as specified:

• Seaton Tuesday Night Transition class closed 19th & 26th November.
• Fullarton Monday Evening Easy class closed till further notice (lack of attendance)

All other classes are business as usual. Most classes will shut for the Xmas break by 8th December, and resume 3rd February, but some classes may run later and start earlier. There will be holiday classes run over the Xmas break, but the details are not yet set. See the next newsletter.

When we first started teaching line dance classes in 1993, I proposed that 2 hours was the right length of time to teach a few dances and maintain peoples concentration. This proved to be the right call and classes flourished. A 2 hour class gives the instructor time to properly teach 3 to 5 dances (depending on level) and have 1/2 hour left over for requests of popular past dances.
A few years ago (before Covid-19 stuffed everything up), we started experimenting with classes in lifestyle villages and retirement homes. We found that those potential customers did not want difficult routines, just some gentle exercise for body and brain. They also could not cope with any longer than an hour session. We developed a special "Lifestyle" program for these classes with difficulty limited to level 1 and 2 dances only. The classes were a roaring success for a while, then started dropping off as customers grew more elderly, or other interests took their fancy.
There was no intent for those customers to integrate into the "regular" classes as that was not part of the lifestyle village brief. All was good.
Then Covid-19 hit...
The fear of catching a disease kept new customers away, and many of our classes dropped to the point that they were not viable. To keep some of them alive, we reduced the length of class from 2 hours to 1.5 hours to reduce the venue hire.
Now, post Covid-19, we have a mix of 2 hour, 1.5 hour and 1 hour classes with differing prices and programmes. I have been watching the products of these classes attempt to move up in level in recent times, and noticed a few problems.
Customers that come from 1.5 hour, and especially 1 hour classes, do not cope as well as those from 2 hour classes. They are not getting the request time that reinforces knowledge and builds muscle memory, to enable those customers to adequately cope with the addition terminology and body mechanics needed to flourish at the higher levels.
If you are one of those people, it may be wise to transition through a longer length easy level class (if one exists in your area) in order to maximise your chances of coping. Just a thought...
It is interesting to see classes being offered interstate and overseas of 30 and 40 minutes. How can you properly teach anything in the field of structured dance, which requires body and mind training, in such a short time. It is unrealistic, and those teachers are only doing it for the quick money, not for the development of the line dance community.

We have been running line dance classes for well over 30 years now. In that time much has changed, including terminology, styling, clothing and music choice. We have also gathered a large amount of teaching experience and choreography knowledge in that time.
We have accumulated many thousands of dance routines (both good and bad) over that time, spread over many levels of difficulty. Initially we measured dance choreography in levels 1 to 5, before eventually developing a level 1 to 10 measuring system. Originally we started with a single level class. After 12 months or so we added an "Advanced" class for the "experienced" dancers. We found newbies were not coping, so we added an "8 week" beginners class that became permanent (fancy thinking we could teach beginners in 8 weeks). The non beginner / non advanced class got split into Basic and Intermediate levels. Later we renamed "Basic" to "Mainstream" and invented "Transition" and eventually "Crossover" level classes to assist people making the move up in a more dignified manner.
In the past when a new piece of choreography (dance) was proposed to be taught, the instructors would gather and estimate its difficulty and nominate it to a specific level of class. It was a very hit and miss process full of personal taste and desires, and often limited knowledge and experience.
This led to us having too many dances of a higher level buried in a lower level repertoire (and a few too low in a high level repertoire). Eventually this phenomenon caused all our classes to stagnate. People wouldn't move up in class level, because the class they attended was doing dances of too high a level, often higher than the level above. Newbies to that level didn't cope and didn't stay. All our classes started to die off and 50% of them were forced to close due to them being uneconomical.
This included many of the intermediate classes and the only advanced class. These higher level classes were, and still are, being run as a service to our long term loyal dancers that have kept the organisation solvent, rather than for any financial gain. They are generally not financially viable, as new dancers take a long time to get to a level to feed them.
Please remember, this is not a charity or a non profit association, it is a business, and our income to put food on the table.
Around 10 years ago, we were forced to react, before we had no classes left. We used our experience to chose a selection of dances to be pushed up into the next level. We did this, and there was a major dancer reaction. Many didn't like it or understand why we were doing it, and a number of them left for "greener" pastures.
It did the trick however. A trickle of the experienced dancers started moving upwards, and a trickle of the newbies stayed and flourished. We started to grow again.
However, the measuring system of dance choreography was still broken. Dance choreography was still being wrongly leveled. It is nearly impossible for experienced dancers and teachers to evaluate a dance without having taught it to inexperienced dancers, as their knowledge is so superior, that everything seems easy. As the owner of the business, I realised that the same thing was going to happen over and over again, unless a better measuring system was developed. I vowed to not cause the same disruption, till I had developed a system that relied less on personal taste, and more on scientific/quantifiable experience. I promised not to go through the pain again, till such a system was available.
As I was an Engineer and Computer Programmer in a past life (yes I did have one LOL), I then spent 10 years developing such a measuring system. I have been testing and fine tuning a computer programme that I have written to solve this issue. The programme can evaluate a dance that has not been taught to anyone in our organisation, and give it a level value based on the experience I have captured from all of the dance choreography that has come before it. The more dances that go through the system, the better it becomes at predicting a valid outcome. Effectively it is an artificial intelligence (AI). This involved inventing some new terminology to describe things that I found to be difficulty factors, some obvious and many very subtle. I have about 50 factors that are being measured and implemented into the algorithm.
In preparation, over the last 10 years, I have been "parking" dances from the playlist that were obviously wrongly leveled, hoping they will be forgotten,to ease the pain of the final big move. This has left some instructors in a difficult position to try to persuade the experienced dancers at each level to not continually request dances that are deemed too hard for that level. This has not gone well, and some dancers have become upset by my instructors trying to implement my subtle instructions. People in general don't like losing access to something they have gotten used to having.
I know my computer programme is effective for levels 1 to 6 at the moment, and needs some fine tuning at the levels above, but is still quite effective at those levels as well.
I am now sufficiently confident that I am ready to do the next (and hopefully last) move of dances between levels (some up and some down). This will potentially happen over this Christmas break. I know some people won't like it, and I know some people will leave because of it, but for the future of our organisation and our living, it is important that it is done.
If you don't think it is important, then look around next time someone asks for "Tea for Two Cha", "Nancy Mulligan" or "Witch Doctor" in an easy level class, and see how many people sit down in dismay or frustration. Anyone without years of experience cannot handle them without an exhaustive teach each time they are requested. These pieces of choreography are not being lost, they are just being put in a more realistic location (and available at socials). If you really want to dance them regularly, please move to a suitable class that offers those dances, or please transition to some different "favorite" dances that are more realistic and move on. If an available class doesn't exist, ask for us to create one. If there are enough of you interested, we can do that.
We are the only line dance organisation that provides a path from "no knowledge" to "expert", and everyone needs our organisation to be healthy to keep line dancing going in this state far into the future.
Peter

This holiday can include the following:

If you are interested in, or just curious about this trip, Liz and I are running an information session at 7pm on Friday 25th October at the Vermont Uniting Church Hall, 576 Cross Rd (Cnr New St). There will be free nibbles and drinks provided, but we need to know if you are going to attend, for catering and seating purposes, so RSVP by Wednesday 23rd October via email please.
There will be a small video presentation about our past trips, then a discussion and presentation about the 2026 Egypt trip. This will be followed by a brief introduction around the following two trips 2027 and 2028, and our initial plans for them. If you are a curious past traveler, then you are also welcome to join us on the night, to share your experiences.
Thanks,
Liz and Peter

As there are a number of new people that have joined us this year, and after witnessing a couple of close calls, I feel it is important to remind you all of some rules of the dance floor.