In my experience, two hand turns can (by dancers with their wits about them) have dynamic radii--as in, you can have your arms fully spread when you have room, or you can tighten in your elbows when you don't. With experienced dancers you keep 'weight' the same in both of these configurations: (I say both but of course it can be anywhere along this spectrum.)

red stars = dancers, green = their arms, with green dot = the held hands

So in ECD all couples can two-hand turn in the middle with a tight radius, and no collisions.

(anyone who dances ECD more than me should definitely correct me here!)

On Fri, Apr 14, 2023 at 5:58 PM Winston, Alan P. via Contra Callers <contracallers@lists.sharedweight.net> wrote:

Hi, John.

I do think it's interesting that (North American) contra rules are that both couples swinging in the middle at once is too crowded, but (North American) ECD is totally fine with everybody doing two-hand turns (which have a bigger radius) at once, and a Community Dances Manual dance like "Up the Sides and Down the Middle" is fine with having five couples swinging in the middle at once. ECD typically uses up more space than contra (my rule of thumb is 30sqft per dancer for ECD, 24 for contra, partly because ECD does fall back, come forward and contra does forward and back) but how different in size can sets formed by hands four, sometimes by the same dancers, be?

-- Alan

________________________________________
From: John Sweeney via Contra Callers <contracallers@lists.sharedweight.net>
Sent: Friday, April 14, 2023 3:48 PM
To: contracallers@lists.sharedweight.net
Subject: [Callers] Re: Does P swings (across set) work for you?

Hi Emily,
You say, “Can get away with in in longways dances but contras are a bit tighter”. Hmm… contras ARE longways dances! How much space you need depends on the dance, not the genre. A dance like Bases Loaded is a contra, but definitely needs a bit more space up and down the room.

Happy dancing,
John

John Sweeney, Dancer, England john@modernjive.com 01233 625 362 & 07802 940 574
http://www.contrafusion.co.uk for Dancing in Kent
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