For flow, it depends what comes after the balance. If it's followed by an allemande left, you'd be better balancing left. Allemande right: balance right. Walk forward: balance forward and back. Box circulate: right and back.

But getting dancers to balance left - except as the second half of a Rory O'More-type figure - is hopeless, in my experience. It's my vote for "hardest move in contra dancing".

So I'll say "balance forward and back" in such circumstances.

Yoyo Zhou

On Wed, Nov 8, 2017 at 11:07 AM, Maia McCormick via Callers <callers@lists.sharedweight.net> wrote:

Recently called a dance with an allemande R into long waves, balance wave, allemande L. Because of personal preference, I taught the balance as "balance left, then right", but cuz I didn't teach it all that clearly, the dancers defaulted back into balancing right first, and enough tricky stuff was happening in the dance that I didn't wanna correct them in flight.

I'm just wondering: do others agree that a balance left makes more sense / flows better in this context, or is this a weird personal preference? In your opinion, does the flow of the balance left outweigh its potential unidiomaticness?

Cheers,
Maia

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