4 Dec
2011
4 Dec
'11
5:34 p.m.
Goodness! That's certainly a worthy aim, to make the dances accessible to
all. But I think that people also enjoy moderate novelty. Not dances with
5 new moves in them, and not twelve dances in a night where experienced
dancers have to keep thinking. But some new shiny toy every once in a while
surely keeps your best dancers coming back - and doesn't bother newcomers
at all, since every move is new to them.
The beauty of standard, glossary moves is that experienced dancers can
better help newish dancers, but for the newcomers they're often just as
hard as the "new moves".
I suppose we *could *turn our dances into ONS dances. Wonder what that
would do towards our effort to bring the delights of contra dancing to
greater numbers of people over time.
M
E
On Sun, Dec 4, 2011 at 9:56 AM, Greg McKenzie <grekenzie(a)gmail.com> wrote:
I think standardization is a good thing, in all forms
of engineering.
Personally, I stick to calling dances that require only a small set of
standardized figures. My goal is to keep this art form available to the
most people possible. I know that I, personally, would not have kept
dancing contras if a lot of new calls had been thrown at me every time I
attended. My goal is to keep that venue open to the general non-dancing
public.
So I would not use the call. I have a number of dances in my collection
that I no longer use because they contain calls that could cause "mild
confusion" for some dancers. Of course, almost all of the dances I call
are open to the general public.
- Greg McKenzie
*************
On Sun, Dec 4, 2011 at 6:33 AM, Bob Peterson <bobp(a)contracorner.com>
wrote:
--
As you set out for Ithaka, pray that your journey be long, full of
adventure, full of discovery...
May there be many summer mornings when, with what pleasure, with what joy,
you enter harbors you're seeing for the first time.
~Constantine Cavafy, "Ithaka" 1911
Recently someone posted a dance sequence and
rather then hijack that
thread I'm starting a new one.
> Right hand turn, Left hand turn
> Two hand turn, No hand turn (do-si-do)
> Balance and swing
> Promenade and slip the clutch (ladies turn right and meet the next
gent)
Outside of modern square dancing you can define slip the clutch any way
you like, of course, but within MSD, a slip the clutch requires both
dancers in the couple to already be facing in opposite directions. What
would be borrowed here from MSD is a "ladies rollback while the gents
move
forward".
What's good here is the definition for this rare contra call is included.
What's bad is this exactly not the definition in squares. I know slip the
clutch sounds cooler and is shorter to say.
Its likely this was misobserved, misremembered or a coincidence of
invention. It could even be a very old definition that diverged in the
two
dance styles. It's still going to (mildly)
confuse the handful of people
who dance both contras and MSD-they'll either mess up or hesitate. I can
dance a contra to whatever words the caller wants to use as the caller
defines it, but if this were undefined and sprung on me, say in a medley,
I'd do something the contra caller did not intend. So again I'm glad the
definition is included in the choreography.
(Here's and easy reference to the rollback and slip the clutch calls from
MSD: http://www.mit.edu/~tech-squares/lessons/lesson6.html. There are
more precise definitions at the callerlab site.)
What do you think?
\bob
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