[Callers] Suggestions welcome

James Saxe via Callers callers at lists.sharedweight.net
Thu Jun 11 22:47:34 PDT 2015


On Wed, Jun 10, 2015, Michael Barraclough wrote:

> The regular Phoenix 2nd Saturday Contra is having a contra dance with
> the Desert Valley Squares Club (an LGBT MWSD group). In addition, the
> Desert Valley Squares have been advertising this dance heavily in the
> local LGBT community as part of their recruitment drive.
> 
> Any suggestions as to how best to handle this mix (regular contra
> dancers, MSWD dancers and non-dancers) would be most welcome.

and on Jun 10, 2015, at 10:52 AM, Aahz Maruch responded with some
suggestions, on which I offer my comments.

> I'd do one, maybe two MWSD tips as demos (assuming you call MWSD).

I think the decision about whether to have any MWSD tip(s) belongs
to the relevant organizers in the sponsoring organizations (PHX
Trad Music & Dance and Desert Valley Squares Club).  If there is
such a tip, DVSC might want to supply their own caller for it.

An MWSD tip could be a pure performance/demo with a pre-planned
set of participants (think of a demo that a Morris team might do
during the break at a local contra dance).  Or it could be a tip
where anyone present who dances MWSD (Mainstream, Plus, or
whatever the caller designates) is invited to join in.  Such an
invitation could offer a chance for contra dancers to see that
some of their contradancing friends also enjoy MWSD, but it could
also carry the risk that some overconfident non-MWSDer (or some
person who wasn't paying attention to the announcement about what
was going on) might join in, be totally over their head, and keep
their entire square in a state of near-constant chaos.

In any case, the logistics should be worked out in advance:
How much MWSD, if any, will there be?  (For example, one tip,
consisting of a patter call and a singing call in the same
squares, with no walk-throughs.)  When in the program will it
happen?  Will it use live or recorded music?  If it's recorded
music, the MWSD caller need to make arrangements with the sound
tech.  If it's live music from the same band that's playing for
the contras, the band may need to be in on the planning (picking
a singing call tune, being sure that they still have enough of a
break). ...

> Otherwise, treat basically the same as any other contra night that has
> lots of beginners (maybe with more mixers).  The square dancers will be
> more experienced than the non-dancers, but they will struggle a bit with
> the differences in styling and the phrasing focus (unless they've had
> previous contra experience).

If you have access to a copy of Tony Parkes's book _Contra Dance
Calling: A Basic Text_, you might have a look at his remarks about
calling contras to MWSDers.

As Tony points out, an important difference between MWSDers and
other new contra dancers is that most new dancers simply don't
know a lot of the things experienced contradancers know, but with
MWSDers, you may be surprised at the mix of what things they know
and what things they don't know.  Also there are terms they "know"
but with a different interpretation than in contradancing.

For some moves, MWSDers use different styling than contra dancers
(or trad square dancers).  For example, you may see forearm holds
for allemandes and a very unconnected "palms in" styling for stars.

     http://www.squaredance.or.jp/sdtext/sdtextdata/bm-star4.jpg

Be prepared to teach the prevalent local styling during the
newcomers' session (if there is one) or during the the main dance.
You might explicitly acknowledge the styling differences and
explain that you're not claiming that one style or another is
better or more authentic, but that the styling you're teaching
is "the way we do it here."

MWSDers may be used to dancing "forward and back" in six beats,
or even as few as four beats, and with no regard to the musical
phrase.  You might want to program a dance or two early in the
evening that invite going forward and back on phrase.  An
example might be a circle mixer that ends with a promenade and
that starts with everyone going forward and back twice, with
clearly-timed calling, and with the band playing in a way that
clearly indicates the phrasing.  My idea is that this could
give the MWSDers an experience of what you mean by "dancing to
the phrase" that would help some of them pick up on the idea and
start applying it to other figures as well.  I'm not saying that
everyone will pick up on it, but I think the experience could
be more effective than simply hearing the caller prattle on
about "blah blah eight beats blah blah to the phrase blah blah."
(I'd be interested in reading comments from any readers who
started doing contra *after* having already learned MWSD and
who can remember details of their own experience of learning
the idea of phrasing.)

In recent years, contra dancing has borrowed a number of
figures from MWSD.  In MWSD, those figures likely have precise
definitions, including rules about which way dancers end up
facing.  (This precision enables MWSDers to do the figures in
unexpected sequences with no walk-through.)  When terms from
MWSD enter the contra world, they may become "folk-processed"
by contra callers who haven't taken the trouble to study the
MWSD definitions.  I won't go into details because anyone who
cares to can easily find the CALLERLAB definition documents,
and anyone who doesn't care isn't likely to read a long
exposition by me.

> If you have a chance ahead of time, maybe rehearse contra-style buzz-step
> swing with the square dancers (definitely make clear that they can do a
> walking swing instead).

A swing can work quite nicely with one person walking and
the other doing a buzz step.  I think the following points
are bigger issues for MWSDers getting introduced to contra:

    * MWSDers generally aren't used to doing long swings.

    * MWSDers generally aren't used to the idea of ending a
      swing a the end of a phrase of music.  (A number of years
      ago on a different electronic forum, a very experienced
      and intelligent MWSDer mentioned that the one time she'd
      been to a contra dance, she never did figure out how
      many beats a swing was supposed to take.  Of course
      nothing in her MWSD experience had prepared her to
      imagine that the length of a swing might depend on where
      in the music it starts.)

    * MWSDers may be unaccustomed to the idea of ending swings
      facing a designated direction with "gent" on the left and
      "lady" on the right.  (When they swing and promenade with
      corners, they do have "gent" on the left in the promenade.
      But they might not automatically generalize that rule to
      contexts like "Swung your neighbor and face across".

> 
> You might want to send this to the square dance club, it explains how
> contra dances work from a square dancer perspective:
> 
> http://www.tiac.net/~mabaker/how-contra-dances-work.html
> 

I agree that the article Aahz ("Explaining Traditional Squares and
Contras to MWSD folks" by Clark Baker) is excellent.

> Because gay MWSD almost exclusively uses gendered terminology to
> interoperate with straight squares, your choice whether to make this a
> gender-free dance (I'd consult with the club).
> 

Certainly ask the people who booked you about terminology.  If you
end up using gendered terminology (as I think is likely), you can
of course explain that people's physical characteristics needn't
match their gender roles.

> You might ping Kris Jensen (gay square caller in ABQ who also does
> contra), she may have specific suggestions due to some familiarity with
> Desert Valley.
> 
> http://krisjensen.com/
> kris at squarez.com

Yes, asking advice from someone likely to have relevant knowledge
sounds like a good idea.

I hope some of this will be useful.

--Jim




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