The Caller’s Toolbox: Mary Devlin on NLP

Neuro-linguistic programming (NLP) is a psychological approach patterned on strategies used by successful individuals to assist people to reach personal goals. Language strategies and patterns of behavior are used to enhance clarity of teaching dancers, and used to avoid obstacles that you as a caller may have experienced during a dance.

West coast caller Mary Devlin, a certified NLP Master Practitioner and Trainer, has adapted NLP techniques for use in her work as a caller. In this workshop, Mary will share some techniques that are particularly applicable to dance teaching and calling. The session is suitable for callers at any stage of their development.

Neuro-linguistic programming was developed in the 1970s at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Its primary founders are John Grinder, a linguist, and Richard Bandler, an information scientist and mathematician.

Mary Devlin has taught English country, contra and square dancing at home in Oregon, across the U.S., and in Europe. She particularly loves teaching and coaching callers.

Mary studied Neuro Linguistic Programmming (NLP), earning her trainer certification in 1996. Since then she has been finding ways to use NLP in her dance calling and teaching. She shares some of the techniques in workshops at dance weeks and weekends, one of which was a caller course weekend at Halsway Manor in Somerset (England) that Mary co-led with Bruce Hamilton.

Some of Mary’s favorite dance engagements in those happy pre-Covid days have been the Tommerup dance weekend in Denmark, a special English country dance day in Princeton, NJ, Christmas Country Dance School at Berea, KY, and a Dance Kings (UK) holiday in Torremolinos, Spain, plus many others, including CDSS and BACDS dance weeks.

Besides teaching, calling, and dancing, Mary was President of the Country Dance and Song Society from 2003 to 2006. She has been program director for four BACDS English Dance & Music Weeks and two CDSS English-American Weeks at Pinewoods.