Re: [Callers] Triple Minors in the Midwest

Thanks, Jerome, for a detailed description of your experience. minor sets. In retrospect, it would have been better to have four lines each with two minor sets, or even six sets of four couples each. I agree, sort of. ;-) Rather than lining folks up with a number of completely filled minor sets, with triple minors you might consider asking for sets of seven or eight couples. With seven, for example, this means that a couple is out at the bottom the first walkthrough, but with triple minors I almost always do two walkthroughs. This lets the Ones learn their part more securely, and it gives the inactives the opportunity to experience the dance as a Two and as a Three. At the least, it lets folks take hands six in the second grouping. Your last alternative [six sets of four couples each] is a good way of workshopping several such dances. You dance it once with couples 1, 2, and 3; second time through is couples 1, 3, and 4, and at the end of the figures couple 1 simply moves to the bottom of the set. This allows the original couple 2, who have been waiting out, to start dancing after waiting only once. Eight times through and everyone has had a chance to be an active couple twice. Keeping the sets limited to 7 or 8 couples gives folks a longer time to dance and still allows you to run the dance long enough so that every couple gets to be active at least once. Since many of the triple minors are unequal dances-- i.e., there's more activity for the Ones than for the other four dancers-- one way to get a really, Really, REALLY nasty look is to have long lines and a couple gets to the top just as you announce last time through the dance. The "associated tune" with the Young Widow could be found in Volume I of English Country Dance Tunes, edited by Peter Barnes. There's a recording of it by Bare Necessities on their CD "At the Ball." couples consisting of beginners, but if they managed to progress they smoothed it on the next go-around. Huzzah! Many thanked me for calling an unusual dance. Yes, triple minors can be confusing if the dancers have only experienced duple minor improper or Becket dances, which comprise most contra programs these days. However, by occasionally including a triple minor (or a dance in an odd formation, or a country dance in waltz time, etc.) you're broadening your dancers' horizons and also increasing their skills. I recall one of my local dancers who had attended only my dances for many years. She finally went off to a hot contra dance an hour or two away and had a great time-- enthusiastic and skiller dancers, hot music, all very energizing and satisfying. "But," she later confided, "all they did were contras where everyone moved all the time. No squares, no triplets, no mixers, nothing elegant, no variety." over-rotating. It sometimes helps to stress "Large circles!" Extending those arms means that folks have a greater distance to cover, which means they don't turn the circles as far. inverse was also true. Yes, if the ones know what they're doing, they can often pull the others in. It's helpful to remind the inactives to face up toward the head of the set at the end of each time through the dance. They'll see the actives launch into action and this may help they realize the new goruping in which they find themselves. When you do Sackett's harbor <grin>, having folks join hands three facing three rather than in long lines helps the new minor sets establish themselves. Double huzzah! people will find a place in their hearts for these figures. May blessings of the dance gods shower upon you. ;-) David Smukler and I were just this week looking through a long list of possible other dances to include in the appendix to the forthcoming "Cracking Chestnuts" book, making a special point of looking for more triple minors. There are some interesting choreographic possibilities in triple minors that duples just don't offer, and presenting that sort of variety helps gives dancers a broader sense of country dancing as a whole. David Millstone