Re: [Callers] Thoughts on B2/A1 swings and having time to flourish

Precisely. What Jeff says here is to me much more than an aside as it helps define and clarify my thoughts around the main point i was trying to make. Dancers are accustomed to swinging for anywhere from 8 to 12 counts (as a balance and swing is 16, minus the 4 counts a balance takes), thus a swing longer than 12 counts feels too long. "Counting from the end" is nigh impossible, as we get wrapped up in the experience of the swing and it's mostly those who are well-developed musicians and/or who know contra tunes by heart that can pick up on where in the musical phrase they are without counting and thus judge how far from the end of the phrase they are and correctly time the initiation of a 4-count flourish. But in the event that a 16-count swing happens, the moment when it suddenly feels like too long a swing (that moment where we pass 12 counts MAY be perceptible to everyone, not just musicians, because we're conditioned to swinging for no more than 12 counts) could perhaps become the cue to initiate a 4-count flourish and magically arrive on time. It's just a hypothesis based on dancer behavior and my experience as a caller and musician, but it may bear testing out. I'd be curious to hear how an experiment goes if someone calls 16 count swings where dancers have been instructed to initiate 4-count ending flourishes the moment they feel they've swung for a normal amount of time. (Might just try running that experiment myself at a May 7 workshop i'm co-leading.) On Sun, Mar 27, 2016 at 6:36 PM, Jeff Kaufman <jeff.t.kaufman(a)gmail.com> wrote: