[Callers] Role Scramblers dances with balances

[Erik Hoffman via Callers]

If my memory serves me well, yes, grand right and lefts and other things. I jotted it down at Mendocino, (BACDS dance week) or maybe Harvest Moon, in the 80s. Since it was at a dance camp, there was an expectation that we'd figure It out or have a good time messing up. And, that's part of what I recall. That it was OK to mess up and laugh a lot!

~erik hoffman

-----Original Message-----
From: James Saxe [mailto:jim.saxe at gmail.com] 
Sent: Friday, April 8, 2016 11:26 AM
To: callers at lists.sharedweight.net
Cc: Erik Hoffman <erik at erikhoffman.com>
Subject: Re: [Callers] Role Scramblers dances with balances

On Apr 8, 2016, at 9:49 AM, Erik Hoffman wrote:

> Don’t know if you call squares, but Ted Sanella
[Sannella --js]
> called this square—a number of times when I was lucky enough to dance to his calling.
> ... 
[remainder of Erik's message w/ full dance description copied below]

Erik,

Do you remember anything about the break figures Ted used with this dance?

If the breaks included allemande left (with corners) and right and left grand, dancers would have to cope with looking in what could feel like the "wrong" direction to find corners and with going in what could feel like the "wrong" direction for the right and left grand.  If the allemande left came after a partner swing, that might have been particularly challenging for dancers unused to that sort of thing.  [Side note:  Using an Alamo Ring type chorus could meet Lindsay Dono's original request for "dances with balances and waves," but, just as with a regular right and left grand, some dancers could find that the action felt disconcertingly different when they changed gender roles.]

Breaks included things like "head couples right and left through"
or "side 'ladies' chain" or "all four 'men' left hand star" might similarly have required dancers to keep their wits about them (or drawn upon their capacity to remain cheerful in the face their own and each other's goofs).

The sort of stuff I'm talking about strikes me as more suited for a challenging session at a dance camp/weekend than for a regular evening dance--and even more so now than at the time of Ted's visits to California 25-30 years ago, on account of the generally lower average familiarity of contras dancers with squares.  Indeed, if someone were calling at the kind of dance camp/weekend where the acceptable number of squares to call is quite limited, I'd hope they'd lean towards squares that they were confident they could put across without stressing the dancers' readiness to remain cheerful in the face of confusion.

--Jim

>  
> Sex Change Dance
> Mixer
> from Ted Sanella
[Sannella]
>  
> Couple One Swing at Home and Promenade the outside of the Ring All the 
> way, Man One stop at home, Woman One keep going to the left side of 
> Gent Three Those Three go Forward to the middle and Stand There Pat 
> Side Couples R&L Thru—Around the Line of Three Lonely Gent “Do Si Do” 
> around the Threesome then Lonely Gent: Right Hand Round with Partner, 
> Left Hand Round with Woman Three Left Elbow Round with Gent Three,

[Is Left Hand Round followed by Left Elbow Round really what you (Erik) meant?  --js]

> and Take Him Home!

[I presume that at this point Gent 3 takes on the role of Lady 1 and vice versa.  Right? --js]

>  
> Everybody Home with Partner Swing
>  
> —Four times around and all have changed sex roles.  Four more times, and all are back “home”

[As I understand it, the second round would be led by Couple 2, and would swap Lady 2 with Gent 4.  Then the next round would be led by "Couple 3" but with the role of "Gent 3" being danced by the original Lady 1.  And so on.  --js]