[Callers] Down East Country Dance Festival report

Hello everyone, It's been a while since I've written one of these, and a lot has happened in my calling career since the last one. I had my debut at the Scout House in January, calling for the 2nd Saturday dance. I've called for the Monday night dance there as well. I've been booked to call another Monday night dance and this time the band is Notorious! The Mill City dance has been on hiatus for various reasons (hall unavailable, storms, festivals) and will return in May for our 1 year anniversary! Lots of wonderful opportunities. But this report is about my session at the Down East Country Dance Festival a couple of weeks ago in Maine. If you haven't been, this is one of my favorite festivals. So many wonderful sessions, great people and a strong community. I call up there semi-regularly now and it's great each time to visit with my Maine friends. My session was titled "Neighborly Contras". I had no idea what I was going to do with it when I applied, but worked it out over a few weeks after I found out that my application had been accepted. What I decided was that I was going to push the boundaries of modern urban contra dancing by breaking a few of the rules. For example, I planned on calling dances without partner swings, unequal movement (1s are more active than the 2s) and mixers. The last one turned out to be the most problematic. David Millstone sent me a contra mixer that I liked very much, but didn't quite meet the vision that I had for the session. In the end, I decided to write my own. The weekend before, I tried it out on some willing test subjects at a dance called by Lisa Sieverts and discovered that the gents progressed and the ladies stayed in the same spot each time through. After some re-work that week, I was ready for the session. The new dance is copied down below. The session was at 11am on Saturday. I arrived a little after 10am, hoping to attend Chrissy Fowler's caller's workshop, but ran into the band in the hallway. I had worked with Calliope a couple of times before on visits to Maine, so it was nice to be familiar with them. They were putting together tune sets, so we were able to plan out the session, get the feel for each dance set and pick the tunes ahead of time. This made things very easy on stage. We started late, so to fit in 4 dances turned out to be very tight. Having the tunes picked let me focus on keeping the walkthroughs short and the dancers dancing. To be fair to the dancers, I provided a disclaimer at the beginning of the session warning them that they wouldn't see their partners too much. I even jokingly mentioned that the waltz session was across the hall if they wanted to make goo-goo eyes at their partner. 8^) Here are the dances that I called: Essex Reel duple improper Tony Parkes A1: neighbor do-si-do, neighbor swing A2: 4 in line down the hall, turn as couples and come back B1: Circle Left, Circle Right B2: Right Hand Star, Left Hand Star I had a choice between this dance and another with unequal choreography, but this one fit better with the session as a whole. No use crying over... becket mixer Chris Weiler A1: Partner balance and swing A2: Circle Left 3/4, pass thru, neighbor #2 swing B1: Long Lines (notice 3rd neighbor next to you) Neighbor #3 allemande left 1+1/2 B2: Ladies Chain Left hand star, turn away from your star and face your next partner I had some great positive feedback from a few people after the session. People did want me to call it all the way through. One person pointed out to me that there are no anchors in this dance, no partner to turn to, no shadow, nothing consistent. Another person figured out that if you mess it up, you can grab just about anyone and start over. It taxed their brains a bit, but it was early in the festival and people were up for the challenge. I had asked Calliope to play easy, happy reels for the first two dances to keep people's spirits up while doing unfamiliar choreography. Calliope loves to play jigs, so the next one they set to a nice bouncy set. I also took pity on the dancers and called some more conventional dances to finish the session. Black Bird in the Night duple improper, waves (neighbor right, ladies, left) Don Flaherty A1: balance wave, rory-o-more slide right balance wave, rory-o-more slide left A2 neighbor balance and swing B1: Ladies do-si-do 1+1/2 partner swing B2: long lines, circle left 3/4, pass thru to new waves The last dance, I asked for driving reels and Calliope picked some great rip-roaring ones! Sleepless at Pinewoods duple improper Bob Isaacs A1: Neighbor #1, pull by right, #2 pull by left, #3 pull by right #4 allemande left once #3 pull by right, #2 pull by left A2: Neighbor #1 balance and swing B1: Circle left 3/4, partner swing B2: Ladies chain, left hand star I had a lot of fun calling the session and working with Calliope. It felt great to have almost everything that I wanted to do succeed so well. I look forward to calling at more festivals in the future! I'd love to hear how other people are doing (especially the people who are newer to calling)! Happy calling and dancing!! Chris Weiler Goffstown, NH