I think it’s probably the more experienced dancers that have trouble initially with a CCW progression. Most new dancers just go where the dance puts them, and they don’t think about it too much otherwise.

That said, many leftward progressions are just “slide left, circle” or “circle 3/4, pass through” and I would agree that makes those dances easier, but the fact that they progress CW is just a correlation.

In my opinion, one common thing that makes CCW dances harder to understand for dancers is callers who have everyone circle *right* one place to get set up at the beginning. If you had a backward-progressing improper dance, would you swap the 1s and 2s before the walkthrough?

Sleepy rants and rambles,
Isaac B

On Sep 11, 2024, at 9:05 PM, David Harding via Contra Callers <contracallers@lists.sharedweight.net> wrote:



A minor point looking to the future:  Most Beckett dances have a clockwise progression, not counterclockwise.  I would suggest getting your community accustomed to the clockwise direction of progression.  As you start to draw from the canon of dances, you will have far more to choose from with that progression.  And the ones that go counterclockwise tend, I think, to be more challenging.  Often the instructions lining up are, starting with duple minor configuration, "Take hands four from the top and circle left one place into Beckett formation."  This builds in a little muscle memory of the progression direction and puts the ones moving down the hall. 

Dave Harding
Dancing in the Chicago area and across the Midwest

On 9/11/2024 10:30 AM, Katherine Kitching via Contra Callers wrote:
Hi all- here in Halifax, to keep things simple for our beginner-full/generally unskilled group, we never dance in Becket formation these days.

But Luke's original post has suddenly got me "seeing the light" about how I could use simple beckets as a way to get beginner people dancing in contra lines without worrying about the complexities of ejection and getting ppl to remember to change places when ejected.  (And also avoiding the strange feeling of how the dance symmetry changes when you switch from moving up the hall to down the hall or vice versa).

So I'm going to test it out with my group...

But I realize it's been a while since I danced a Becket and I forget some of the basic mechanics.

I just tried googling but could not easily find the info I was looking for...

so-- apologies for asking such a basic question here-- but I trust it will be an efficient way to find an answer :)

First off just a bit of info on my plan--
, I plan for now to try out only very simple Beckets where everyone comes back to their home place after every figure.

So i'll be explaining the progression as sliding CCW (I'm gonna go with CCW progression only, for now) 2 places, until you are in a new duple.
(we may play on simple variations of this like going forward in lines towards the old couple, and veering backwards towards the new couple as in the first dance Luke presented here).

I understand that if there is an odd number of couples, then every time the dance runs through, a couple will be ejected, either at the top or the bottom.

My question is-- if there is an EVEN number of couples, then are two couples ejected, top and bottom, every second time??

Or, does the progression just involve a big fast turn for the people at the top and bottom of the giant oval, so that they always meet a new couple, every single time?

thanks all for your help :)

Kat k 

_______________________________________________
Contra Callers mailing list -- contracallers@lists.sharedweight.net
To unsubscribe send an email to contracallers-leave@lists.sharedweight.net
_______________________________________________
Contra Callers mailing list -- contracallers@lists.sharedweight.net
To unsubscribe send an email to contracallers-leave@lists.sharedweight.net