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.

New book! Square Dance Calling: An Old Art for a New Century

(available now)

From: Jerome Grisanti via Contra Callers <contracallers@lists.sharedweight.net>
Sent: Wednesday, November 23, 2022 11:05 AM
To: Lisa Sieverts <lisa@lisasieverts.com>
Cc: Caller's discussion list <callers@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> 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

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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