[Callers] Gate vs Hand Cast

[Winston, Alan P.]

"Hand cast" is definitely a thing I've heard, but only in the context of a couple down the middle and back and cast off (which was not at all unknown in the 80s when I started contra dancing (though more a feature of chestnut contras) , but hasn't turned up too much since.  In contra, the actives casting off was definitely something they did with the inactives.  You could do an eyes-only cast off or an arm around the waist cast off or a hand cast.) In any case, at the end of the cast off the actives had progressed and everybody was facing partner.

I think the hand cast tended to be 1s up the middle until between the 2s, who also face up and take the handy hand with the nearest 1.  2s backing up strongly as 1s go forward strongly, go 3/4 around until facing partner in progressed place.

The mechanics of a gate in English dance are pretty much the same - both people facing the same way, one moves as strongly back as the other forward around a pivot point at the hands.)  [It seems to be that back in the 80s there wasn't as much emphasis on the equality of the turns; one person could be a gatepost and pivot in place while the other more or less orbited around them.  That doesn't seem to be how it's taught now, so modern American English gates and contra hand casts are about the same.

In my personal idiolect, hand casts go with casting off, which implies somebody coming up the middle and symmetrical casting.  (The gates in "The Bishop" are 360 degree hand casts, no question.)

Gates (in the 21st century) are more flexible.  You can have asymmetric gates (in improper formation circle left once round and neighbors gate around with the ladies going forward and the gents backing up (as in Madeira Dream or Woodshed, or in contra in Susan Kevra's "Circle of Love" ); you can describe the moment in Bellamira when the 1s proper lead down, turn alone, lead up and turn as couple to finish improper facing down as a gate but nobody's casting anywhere; the opening moments of "Come Let's Be Merry" (1s face up, take inside hand, gent backs round and lady forward) are gates, but I don't think they're hand casts.

So according to me, the hand cast is an instance of the class of gate turns limited to being a cast off with hands.  The class of gate turns includes many things that aren't hand casts.

If I'd been on the floor and you called the move you describe a hand cast, it would have taken me longer to understand it, but I wouldn't have tried to argue from the floor that you were calling it the wrong thing - that's just rude.  If I were calling it I would have called it a gate.

I seem recall Sarah vanNorstrand at BACDS American dance week calling a dance with a symmetrical turn of this class that maybe could have legitimately been callend a hand cast and she called it a gate, so your dancer and I are not the only ones with this opinion.

-- Alan

On 10/7/18 10:20 PM, Don Veino via Callers wrote:
You may have seen my "Feeling Gravity's Pull" which I posted at the end of the recent Mad Robin teaching thread.

In that dance, there's a move where partners are facing in side by side on the outside of the set (where the Gents have forward momentum and the Ladies neutral to backward momentum) and my intent was for them to rotate around their inside hand connection with the Gents going forward and Ladies backing up once around. (As opposed to the Gent walks a circle around the Lady.) So the net effect would be like a courtesy turn, in going around a central point between the dancers, just a little "wider."

I believe the correct term for this would be "Hand Cast" but I had a dancer who was adamant about it being a "Gate" in ECD so when I posted the dance that's the term I used. I've again done some googling and found no ready reference to a "Hand Cast" in ECD and only the slightest in a contra context, yet the term sticks in my mind.

What say ye? Is "Hand Cast" a thing and correct in this context?

Thanks,
Don



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