[Callers] Mad Robin (was Re: As in Petronella)

[James Saxe via Callers]

Several recent messages to this mailing list have mentioned
alternative--and perhaps more descriptive--names for the
contra dance figure known as "Mad Robin" (after an English
country dance that includes a vaguely similar, but far from
identical, figure):

     side gypsy
     shuttle
     sliding doors [though actual sliding doors don't go
          around each other]
     slide about, men (or women) in front

As I've pointed out previously

     http://lists.sharedweight.net/pipermail/callers-sharedweight.net/2013-June/006194.html

the earliest contra I know to use the figure is "Saint Paddy's
Day" by Kirston Koths, who referred to the figure as a (full)
sashay.  Kirston tells me he finished composing the dance on
Oct. 14, 1982.  It was first called at Pattie Whitehurst's
wedding reception the same day.

Some time in the 1990's someone else (perhaps Susan Kevra with
"One Hundred Years of Mischief", written in 1995) reintroduced
the figure (independently, I presume), the name "Mad Robin" got
attached to it, and other callers began incorporating it into
new dances.

--Jim