23 Nov
2022
23 Nov
'22
4:49 p.m.
And of course there are dozens of contras written before the Great Revival (roughly
1965-present), when swinging wasn’t considered essential to a good dance. Money Musk,
anyone?
Tony Parkes
Billerica, Mass.
www.hands4.com<http://www.hands4.com/>
New book! Square Dance Calling: An Old Art for a New Century
(available now)
From: Jerome Grisanti via Contra Callers <contracallers(a)lists.sharedweight.net>
Sent: Wednesday, November 23, 2022 11:05 AM
To: Lisa Sieverts <lisa(a)lisasieverts.com>
Cc: Caller's discussion list <callers(a)sharedweight.net>
Subject: [Callers] Re: Dances with fewer swings
I second Lisa's idea, with the added note that such choreography will likely face some
resistance if it's not sold well. So I encourage fun and creative choreography that
will outweigh the perceived loss of value of dances with fewer swings.
We might reinvigorate ideas from old square-dance figures (lady/lark around two, gent,
robin drop through) and from English dance (cast and lead, set and turn single). Selling
meaning to explore the fun and connective elements in these figures, rather than seeing
them as placeholders. I'm sure there are many more ideas and I'm interested in
them.
Jerome
On Wed, Nov 23, 2022, 10:18 AM Lisa Sieverts via Contra Callers
<contracallers@lists.sharedweight.net<mailto:contracallers@lists.sharedweight.net>>
wrote:
At the risk of derailing this conversation, ah, I definitely am derailing it so will
change the subject line.
I’d like to see new COVID-aware choreography with fewer swings. If swinging is perhaps the
most dangerous thing we do while dancing, I’d like to see some new dances that emphasize
partner swings and de-emphasize neighbor swings, and at least some dances without any
swings.
I’m intrigued by the idea that dances without swings open up 32 beats of opportunity for
new choreography.
Lisa Sieverts
603-762-0235
lisa@lisasieverts.com<mailto:lisa@lisasieverts.com>
On 23 Nov 2022, at 9:30, Jeff Kaufman via Contra Callers wrote:
"during the average contra evening, you will
spend approximately 30 minutes
swinging"
Tangent: I thought "that can't be right" but a little playing with
numbers
and I think it is. My back of the envelope: guess ~12 dances, each ~17
times through, with ~20 beats of swinging per dance. That's 4k beats of
swinging, which at 118bpm is 35min. Another way to think of it is that in
a 3hr evening half of your time is dancing and a third of that is swinging.
Jeff
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