18 Jun
2010
18 Jun
'10
11:42 a.m.
Hi John -
Thanks for those links - they'll come in handy!
We do actually do Barn-dance-type dances here, but for weddings and
birthdays when someone wants to get their friends dancing. We call them,
rather inelegantly, ONS or One Night Stand dances.
But you are right. I'm not aware of any regularly scheduled dances for
basically non-dancers, unless you count Family dances. But a Family dance
that goes on for a while begins to resemble a contra dance - those darn kids
learn so fast!
Perhaps others on this list will know of pockets of community dances where
the emphasis is on the socializing rather than the dancing.
I like the distinction Mary Dart mentioned in her book Contra Dance
Choreography - a Reflection of Social Change<http://www.cdss.org/elibrary/dart/>
:
"...the term '*community dance*' refers to a dance event enjoyed by a group
of people for whom the dance is but one of many shared activities; the term
*'dance community' *refers to a group of people whose primary association
with one another is at the dance"
M
E
On Fri, Jun 18, 2010 at 4:03 AM, John Sweeney <info(a)contrafusion.co.uk>wrote;wrote:
Hi Martha,
You said "Wouldn't it follow that sometimes some of the 1.5
square yards will have to be wasted if the width isn't a multiple of 10
feet (for contra) or 15 feet (for English)?"
Absolutely, it is just a quick rule of thumb to get an idea
of the capacity of a hall, i.e, No you can't get 150 people doing a
dance at the same time!
I susepct a wedding party will be happy to squeeze two lines
into that space, especially if you can push the chairs back a bit to
make it slightly bigger.
And of course, for a wedding party, I wouldn't be calling
modern American contras, or what you call English Country Dancing
(Playford-style). I would be selecting simple barn dances such as you
will find at:
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/greenery/BarnDances/
http://www.mts.net/~jinks%20/fd/menu.htm<http://www.mts.net/%7Ejinks%20/…
http://www.ceilidhcalling.co.uk/dancelist.php
I'm not sure if you do this sort of stuff much in America;
when I visit I only ever seem to find contra and ECD (which is fine, as
I love both). But here in England there is a whole other stream of
social folk dance known as Barn Dance or Ceilidh.
Hope that helps.
Happy dancing,
John
John Sweeney, Dancer, England john(a)modernjive.com 01233 625 362 &
07802 940 574
http://www.contrafusion.co.uk <http://www.contrafusion.co.uk/> for
Contra Dancing in Kent
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Save by an evil chance,
And the merry love the fiddle
And the merry love to dance. ~ William Butler Yeats