[Callers] Dances For Short Line

JD Erskine iDance via Callers callers at lists.sharedweight.net
Sun Oct 18 19:46:33 PDT 2015


On 2015-10-18 1652, Rich Dempsey via Callers wrote:
snip

> I love the use of shorter sets to bring asymmetric dances out for a
> spin.  Chestnuts and triplets and triple minors come to mind.  In the
> circumstance that started this thread, a hearty Chorus Jig sounds like
> a win.
>
> Rich

It's nice to have 7 couples to make a Triple Minor work well. Doing so 
keeps a relatively high number of folks from standing out at some point.

One may also dance a Triple Minor as in the Scottish Country dance 
standardised way of using a four couple set. There it is oft referred to 
as "a dance for three couples in a four couple set."

Triplets are great fun, as can be other Whole Set dances. In them one 
effectively gets to dance with many of the others in the set.

Kathy Anderson ran a workshop some years back at a Contra dance weekend 
I was at covering dances for strange, small or mixed numbers, or some 
such name. Good fun. Wish I could find the notes from it.

Not be missed are "other" country dances which, as they are not in a 
Longways Set For As Many As Will, 1s Improper formation, have largely 
been relegated in perception to the role of 
barn/community/family/ceilidh/eceilidh dance events. Not "proper" 
Contra. Check them out.

Some are once-and-to-the-bottom, others shift within a given dance 
between dancing in duple minor sets to a whole set figure and back.

It's all dance.

The now late James Barber, television cooking show host we had "up/over 
here" a few years back (The Urban Peasant), had a catch phrase of, "Use 
what you got." That might apply here, for numbers, for choices.

Cheers, John
-- 
J.D. Erskine
Victoria, BC

Island Dance - Folk & Country
Vancouver Island & BC islands
dance info - site & mail list
http://members.shaw.ca/island.dance/


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