Hi Seth and Luke,
 
    This discussion has inspired me to revisit grid contras.
We danced a grid contra yesterday at our monthly dance in Christchurch.
The majority of the dancers (24) were experienced but 8 were less so.
Even so it went well and all found it fun.

Here is a video of the setting up, teaching, walk throughs and the dance.
With a bit of computer animation thrown in.
https://youtu.be/gLKBm4j7gbQ
There were a few hiccups with the filming as my camera suffered tripod
droop! I had a great birds eye view from the stage, but the
camera less so :-(

I  called a variation of Petronella Fancy which I wrote in 2012.
It was inspired by Kim's Game by Colin Hume. Petronella Fancy
was originally a type of 4 face 4, but easily extended to
an arbitrary regular grid. 

 The variation I used last night changed the order (to suit the
 music better) and used both  a double progression and
 double transgression.

We danced on a grid of 4 adjacent contra lines of length 4 couples.
Total of 32 dancers. The dance has a period of 10 during which
each dancer will swing  5 different neighbors (each twice).

The 2s in the left line, 1s in the right line, 2s in front hands-four
and 1s in back hands-four all travel around the perimeter of the grid.
The 6 remaining couples form 3 pairs that vibrate back and forth.

This is the version we danced.

Petronella Fancy DP
A1     (4) [Entire oval along the set] Balance ring (4) Petronella turn
          (4) [Entire oval along the set] Balance ring (4) Petronella turn
A2     (4) Pass through along (NR)
         (4) Pass through along (N2R)
         (8) N2 neighbor swing; face partner
B1     (8) Men allemande left 1 & 1/2
         (8) Partner swing
B2    (8) [Groups of four] Circle left 3/4 [with N2]; face along
         (8) Lines across the set forward and back

In general this dance is interesting if the grid does not have many
interior hands-four rings, as those couples vibrate and see very
few neighbors.

Here is the original
   http://www.ibiblio.org/contradance/thecallersbox/dance.php?id=12042
It had a single progression and this means that couples traveling around the
perimeter are out very frequently which is not much fun.

I can easily generate animations for other size grids if anyone is interested.

Cheers, Bill




On 10/10/2018 9:05 a.m., Tepfer, Seth via Callers wrote: