---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: Tami Dahl <dahltami888(a)gmail.com<mailto:dahltami888@gmail.com>>
Hi Everyone,
We have a potluck and caller workshop coming up at the end of April! They are focused on calling styles in the contra community. We hope you can join us for them!
For a while now we have been experimenting with a gender-neutral calling style called Larks and Robins. We'd like to get your feedback on this - so we’d like to invite you to a potluck before the regular Friday dance on April 28 to come and talk with us about how it’s been going.
After the potluck, our Friday dance at Dec Rec will introduce a third option for gender neutral calling - "positional" calling, which removes gender and role terms altogether. Our intention is for these experiments to explore ways to deliver great dances efficiently, inclusively, and authentically. Come check it out, give us your feedback, and enjoy the great music by Snapfinger with Ed Howe and positional calling by Beadle!
The following Saturday morning on April 29, Beadle will run a positional calling workshop with live fiddle tunes to help callers in the area play with another way of getting dancers to the right place, on time. All levels welcome - more details in the flyer attached.
Email Tami at dahltami888(a)gmail.com<mailto:dahltami888@gmail.com> with any questions!
April 28 | Friday Night Dance and Potluck Discussion @ Decatur Rec Center 6:00pm
• 6:00 - 7:45 Potluck and community discussion on gender neutral calling
• 8:00 - 10:30 Dance, positional calling by Beadle and tunes by Snapfinger with Ed Howe -- Leila Soulen (fiddle), Alan Gordon (mandolin, cittern), Laura Joseph (guitar), Russ Sites (guitar, clawhammer banjo), and Ed Howe (fiddle)
April 29 | Saturday Morning Caller Workshop: ‘Positional Calling’
* 10:00 - 12:00 Caller Workshop in Decatur, GA
* Sign up with this form <https://nam11.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fforms.gle…>
* Facilitated by Beadle, fiddle by Ed Howe - more info in the flyer
Hi all,
The Wikipedia "Square Dance" entry, which covers all Square
Dance (Playford, ECD, MWSD, traditional American, Irish, etc.) was recently
vandalised with claims that Square Dancing is racist and antisemitic.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Square_dance
These claims have now been removed. But, in order to show how
far from the truth they are, I thought it might be nice to set up a page
which showed all the different styles of Square Dancing from around the
world and across time.
I therefore created this page:
http://contrafusion.co.uk/SquareDanceHistory.html with a brief history and
lots of diverse videos.
I would be grateful for any additions, corrections,
suggestions, etc., especially for suggestions of videos which show any other
forms of Square Dancing, or from any other countries.
Please let me know if you have any good ideas.
Thanks.
Happy dancing,
John
John Sweeney, Dancer, England john(a)modernjive.com 01233 625 362 & 07802
940 574
http://www.contrafusion.co.uk for Dancing in Kent
I remain entertained that while we conjure how to ensure dancers complete repetitive 30+ second sequences relatively in time to repetitive tunes, some can retain infinitely complex sequences for infinitely complex music within. Frank Hodes, who dance with Martha Graham, just died. Here is a link to his New York Times obituary which contains a link to his most well known performance with Ms Graham https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/20/arts/dance/stuart-hodes-dead.html?unlock…
After dancing to some of Lisa's Greenleaf's 🔥 squares at Beantown Stomp
last weekend, I'm feeling inspired to add some to my repertoire. (To be
clear, I'm looking for squares-for-contra-dancers, not MWSD squares.)
1. Any resources to recommend for someone learning to call squares?
2. Any advice to share, techniques to look into, things you wish you'd
known when starting out / wish contra callers knew about squares?
3. Suggestions for callers to look up on YouTube (besides Lisa ofc) /
fave videos?
4. Favorite dances that I should add to my box?
Thanks in advance,
Maia
--
Maia McCormick (she/her)
917.279.8194
I remember my first experience dancing with Sandy Bradley when she came to Boston some time in the late 60s or early 70s and did a workshop on western style squares. I was so excited about the different style and feel of them to the New England and southern squares I was used to. After moving to Michigan we invited her several times to call our dances, which we held then in a bar on the shore of a pretty lake.
Bob
Ah, I remember dancing to her calling at the Round Lake Inn. What fun!
John B. Freeman, SFTPOCTJ
On March 20, 2023, at 12:42 PM, "Stein, Robert via Contra Callers" <contracallers(a)lists.sharedweight.net> wrote:
I remember my first experience dancing with Sandy Bradley when she came to Boston some time in the late 60s or early 70s and did a workshop on western style squares. I was so excited about the different style and feel of them to the New England and southern squares I was used to. After moving to Michigan we invited her several times to call our dances, which we held then in a bar on the shore of a pretty lake.
Bob
I'll echo what Lisa says about letting the band play what they most want to
play. If they're not playing something they like, it doesn't matter how
good a match the tunes are to the dance.
There were a couple of times over the years that I asked for jigs and then
regretted it after the dance started. The two bands involved were clearly
not up for jigs, and reels would have been much better even though (I felt)
the dances were crying out for jigs.
(Probably the musicians should have said something to me rather than
agreeing to play jigs, but I imagine they wanted to give it their best shot
and I can appreciate that.)
Mark Widmer
> Lisa Sieverts <lisa(a)lisasieverts.com> wrote
>
> When in doubt, let the band play the tunes they most want to play. This is
> especially true for a less experienced band.
>
> Because really, any dance works with any tune (assuming we’re not talking
> about some weird crooked dance or tune).
>
> Lisa
> Nelson, NH
>
> Lisa Sieverts
> 603-762-0235
> lisa(a)lisasieverts.com
>
>
Hi callers,
Website help request:
As I've been ramping up my accepting gigs again post-shutdown, I'm
realizing that I've put off my "get an actual website" too long.
Any suggestions for website designers for caller pages or contra performer
pages?
I can provide photographs myself, for what that's worth.
This is one of those things where, yeah, I could trudge through it myself
with a DIY site-builder attached to a standard web host or Square, but I do
UX Design as my 40-hour-a-week job and I already have many things on my
plate, and I just really haven't found motivation to take on Another
Project. So I really just want to be able to hand someone some money and
know I'll get a good product that isn't needlessly complex.
Self-promotion perspective request:
I'm also looking for ways to appropriately do self-promotion as a caller.
I love doing series dances, and also love doing the dances for groups with
lots of new folks, too. But I also would enjoy expanding doing more special
events, and am getting more comfortable with traveling again, pandemic-wise.
There's this sort of odd condition where the A-List Well-Known Callers
don't need to advertise, but to get there, you need to either/both
advertise and/or have your summers off so you can do All The Tours and All
The Summer Camps. On top of that, New England is kind of a funny area
because we have so many weekly/monthly series dances that we don't have big
dance weekends like pretty much everywhere else in the country.
And ... I dunno, for many of us, there's an unknown of "How much
self-promotion until you become pushy / obnoxious?"
I've been calling for 11 years. Before the pandemic I was doing 30-40 gigs
a year, including some wedding/One-Night-Stand events and smattering of
special events. I've headlined at Flurry in 2018 and got positive feedback.
I known where I'm at in terms of effectively choosing and teaching dances
from simple through advanced. I solicit feedback from organizers I call
dances for. And I know that being an advocate for Larks/Robins as well as
dancer-safety has been a black mark for me in some bookers' minds.
But I still get people being like "Oh, how long have you been calling?" ---
I realize part of this is the name change from Ron to Julian, but, part of
it is definitely hesitation to like, I dunno, email organizers I don't
personally know asking about dance weekends or whatnot. Maybe there's
partly the "imposter syndrome" in there as well.
One thing I do know is that I now have no recent good video of me calling,
which I'm earmarking as part of the website project.
Perspective on self-promotion is appreciated, and perspective for anyone
who also books dances is appreciated.
In dance,
Julian Blechner
he/him
(Western Mass, USA)
I'm looking for recommendations for contras written to specifically match a
given tune, square or crooked. Obviously, there's singing squares, the
Chestnuts and some well known examples like David Kaynor's Cherokee
Shuffle. I'm looking for other examples of excellent "modern era" dances
perfectly crafted to fit an outstanding or unusual tune - such that it
surpasses the standard "pick the dance, then a suitable tune" approach to
foster dance floor joy.
I've written a few such dances but would love to augment my repertoire with
others.
Thanks,
Don
CDSS's On The Beat with Ralph Sweet, written by Ralph and edited by Nils Fredland, is a great source of both non-singing and singing squares. I'll bring my copy with me to SFQCDC for you to look through.https://cdss.force.com/commons/s/product/on-the-beat-with-ralph-swe… from my Verizon, Samsung Galaxy smartphone
-------- Original message --------From: Maia McCormick via Contra Callers <contracallers(a)lists.sharedweight.net> Date: 3/18/23 09:21 (GMT-08:00) To: Shared Weight Contra Callers <contracallers(a)lists.sharedweight.net> Subject: [Callers] Starting to call squares at contra dances After dancing to some of Lisa's Greenleaf's 🔥 squares at Beantown Stomp last weekend, I'm feeling inspired to add some to my repertoire. (To be clear, I'm looking for squares-for-contra-dancers, not MWSD squares.)Any resources to recommend for someone learning to call squares?Any advice to share, techniques to look into, things you wish you'd known when starting out / wish contra callers knew about squares?Suggestions for callers to look up on YouTube (besides Lisa ofc) / fave videos?Favorite dances that I should add to my box?Thanks in advance,Maia--Maia McCormick (she/her)917.279.8194
