Re: [Callers] Petronella and Green Mountain Petronella

--- Rickey wrote: As I recall the dances Petronella and Green Mountain Petronella differ in the order of the balances and the turns: Petronella: "Around to your right and you balance", while Green Mountain Petronella is "first you balance then you turn". If this is so then how can the tunes for these dances be played together as I have seen suggested. --- end of quote --- Well, you don't have to change the dance with the tune change, but it's fun to do so if your dancers are up for it. You can alert them that they'll be doing the balance/turn in different order and the givem them a heads-up and call once or twice as the tune changes. When we do that, we usually go from Petronella into GMP. The association of these tunes with the dances is a relatively recent phenomenon. Ralph Page cites alternate tunes as ones commonly played in the past for the dance. And remember, too, that the dance as it used to be done, until the early 1970s, was with just the active couple doing the balance and turn, a show-off moment when everyone would strut their stuff and demonstrate their highly individualistic balance steps. Still fun to do it that way. If your dancers are flexible enough to try that, you can encourage folks to try out different styles of balance steps. You'll find an interesting article titled "50 Variations of the Balance" in Northern Junket, Vol. 5, #1, pp. 13-19, located online starting at this URL: http://www.izaak.unh.edu/dlp/NorthernJunket/pages/NJv05/NJv05-01/NJv.05.01.… tm David Millstone