13 Oct
2016
13 Oct
'16
4:52 p.m.
John
You have only to look to the UK to get your answer!
Think about how contras used to (and probably still are) in most UK
folk dance clubs. Less energy, longer balances, shorter swings, no
swings, in-actives etc. Look at the contras that were published in the
Community Dance Manuals. My own dance collection has many has many
dances that I collected in the UK in the late-60s and 70s which would
rarely, if ever, see the light of day at a contra in the USA today or
at the few (Zesty) Contra clubs in the UK. Dances such as: Albany Reel,
Bicentennial Reel, East Meets West, Needham Special, Wrong Side Reel.
And, if I were to include dances that only had a short neighbor swing
and no partner swing I would run out of electrons!
This is the style/content/concepts that Ralph Page taught when he came
to the UK (mid-50s I think).
I suspect that 'smooth' is being used in the description of the RPLDW,
not as Larry Jennings defines it and that 'more gentle' or 'less
driven' might have been a better way to put it.
Michael Barraclough
www.michaelbarraclough.com
--
On Thu, 2016-10-13 at 11:53 +0100, John Sweeney via Callers wrote:
Hi Neal,
Thanks. But I don't understand what Ralph's smoother style
was. To
me, modern contra dancing is beautifully smooth. Larry Jennings
defines the
style in Zesty Contras as "zesty, purposeful, extroverted, smooth,
meticulously phrased, strongly connected, vigorous, New England,
contra
dancing" and goes on to define "Smooth: Refers both to the way the
dancers
carry their bodies and to the flow from one figure into another."
If anything I would say that modern choreography has made much
smoother dances; many of the Chestnuts have disjointed flows.
Happy dancing,
John
John Sweeney, Dancer, England john(a)modernjive.com 01233 625 362
http://www.contrafusion.co.uk for Dancing in Kent
Neal Schlein said:
This might shed some light on the subject -
https://www.library.unh.edu/find/archives/collections/ralph-page-danc
e-legac
y-weekend
Ralph Page Dance Legacy Weekend
The Ralph Page Dance Legacy Weekend (RPDLW) is held every January at
the
University of New Hampshire in Durham. It takes its name from the man
who
was perhaps the single most important figure in the preservation of
traditional dance in New England and was conceived to keep his legacy
alive.
Begun in 1988, the RPDLW celebrates the music and dance of New
England:
contras, squares, and more. From the beginning, the emphasis has been
on
preserving the smoother style of dancing that Ralph Page favored.
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