4 Oct
2016
4 Oct
'16
7:35 p.m.
On 10/4/2016 2:37 PM, Winston, Alan P. via Callers wrote:
Its really tempting to cancel a contra if you only
have a few people,
but you don't want to punish the people who showed up - they may
have foregone other options for their evenings. And there's a sense
of triumph if you can show them a good time. I think its important
to have options ready to go, so you can start on an energetic note
and keep things happening, and if any new person shows up they see
something going on rather than nothing and maybe stick around to get
in the next one.
This is reminding me of a dance I did last year. I had hauled my way
through 2 hours of grisly Bay Area traffic and got there just barely in
time, completely frazzled, set list in hand, to find 3 dancers plus the
dance manager. (Bay Area folks will know about the Canyon Contra, which
ran for many, many years in the 1-room schoolhouse in Canyon, CA. Teeny
but cool.) Just as I was about to pull out a couple of 2-couple English
dances one more person showed up, so I danced in and we did a couple of
triplets, then a waltz-time 3-couple English and a bouncy 3-couple
English. I was mentally riffling through my triplet collection again
when 3 more dancers showed up. Hooray, I had a dance for 9 (Pride of
Dingle)! We took a little break after that, got 1 more dancer on the
floor and did a few teeny contras, then another waltz-time dance for 3
couples. After the next break the manager had to go do manager things
and we lost a couple of early-to-bed dancers so we did Domino 5 (I
dearly love that dance), another triplet and ended with a goofy
French-Canadian dance called Le Brandy. The folks who were first-timers
were impressed that there were dances in "so many different shapes," and
the experienced dancers were impressed that I was able to find ways to
keep us all dancing. It ended up being a really, really enjoyable night.
A couple of years ago I took all of the dances I use for one night stand
gigs and put them into a single document with ultra-compressed notation.
I've sorted them by numbers, style, level of difficulty and a few
other ways. That document has saved my butt a few times. If you've got
a handful of go-to dances for odd situations, it's worth putting them
all onto one easy-to-grab page for those times of need.
Kalia