[Callers] Ralph Page Style

[Michael Barraclough via Callers]

John

You have only to look to the UK to get your answer! 

Think about how contras used to (and probably still are) in most UK
folk dance clubs. Less energy, longer balances, shorter swings, no
swings, in-actives etc. Look at the contras that were published in the
Community Dance Manuals. My own dance collection has many has many
dances that I collected in the UK in the late-60s and 70s which would
rarely, if ever, see the light of day at a contra in the USA today or
at the few (Zesty) Contra clubs in the UK. Dances such as: Albany Reel,
Bicentennial Reel, East Meets West, Needham Special, Wrong Side Reel.
And, if I were to include dances that only had a short neighbor swing
and no partner swing I would run out of electrons!

This is the style/content/concepts that Ralph Page taught when he came
to the UK (mid-50s I think).

I suspect that 'smooth' is being used in the description of the RPLDW,
not as Larry Jennings defines it and that 'more gentle' or 'less
driven' might have been a better way to put it.

Michael Barraclough
www.michaelbarraclough.com

-- 

On Thu, 2016-10-13 at 11:53 +0100, John Sweeney via Callers wrote:
> Hi Neal,
> 	Thanks.  But I don't understand what Ralph's smoother style
> was.  To
> me, modern contra dancing is beautifully smooth.  Larry Jennings
> defines the
> style in Zesty Contras as "zesty, purposeful, extroverted, smooth,
> meticulously phrased, strongly connected, vigorous, New England,
> contra
> dancing" and goes on to define "Smooth: Refers both to the way the
> dancers
> carry their bodies and to the flow from one figure into another."
> 
> 	If anything I would say that modern choreography has made much
> smoother dances; many of the Chestnuts have disjointed flows.
> 
> Happy dancing,
> John
> 
> John Sweeney, Dancer, England john at modernjive.com 01233 625 362
> http://www.contrafusion.co.uk for Dancing in Kent
> 
> Neal Schlein said:
> 
> This might shed some light on the subject -
> 
> https://www.library.unh.edu/find/archives/collections/ralph-page-danc
> e-legac
> y-weekend
> 
> Ralph Page Dance Legacy Weekend
> 
> The Ralph Page Dance Legacy Weekend (RPDLW) is held every January at
> the
> University of New Hampshire in Durham. It takes its name from the man
> who
> was perhaps the single most important figure in the preservation of
> traditional dance in New England and was conceived to keep his legacy
> alive.
> 
> Begun in 1988, the RPDLW celebrates the music and dance of New
> England:
> contras, squares, and more. From the beginning, the emphasis has been
> on
> preserving the smoother style of dancing that Ralph Page favored.
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Callers mailing list
> Callers at lists.sharedweight.net
> http://lists.sharedweight.net/listinfo.cgi/callers-sharedweight.net