10 Sep
2013
10 Sep
'13
12:27 a.m.
At 4:32 PM -0700 9/9/13, James Saxe wrote:
Sam Whited asked for "any move that's ever
been used in a contra dance
(even if only once)" and that isn't listed in the Wikipedia article at
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contra_dance_choreography
or in Sam's lists at
https://github.com/SamWhited/contra-card/issues/2
https://github.com/SamWhited/contra-card/issues/17
I think that the number of such moves will turn out to be quite large,
and also that there will be many cases in which it no clear whether to
count things as distinct moves or as variants of the same move.
No doubt it's difficult or impossible to compile a complete list
of moves for all the reasons you list and show by example. Especially
where a single name is used for more than one move.
But going back to the reason Sam is compiling this list, it's for a
short-hand key to data input for standard moves which are not ambiguous,
for typesetting dance choreography. Anything which is too bizarre for
people to agree on a standard name, or any name which has multiple
meanings, would not be in the short-hand list and would have to be
spelled out in long-hand.
I think the edge cases and outliers can safely be omitted for his
purposes. In fact, anything which could possibly be ambiguous *should*
be left out of the short-hand list for typesetting dances, to force
the notation to be explicit and avoid that ambiguity.
-Eric