[Callers] Teaching a Ricochet Hey

The key thing for the caller to understand is that when the two dancers ricochet they take each other's place in the hey, and are now going backwards. This means that they must NOT just bounce back the way they came, or to a neutral position on their own side - they have to follow the looping flow of the hey. I never actually explain that though. I just tell them to bounce back at the opposite angle to the way they came in. Describing it as a triangle usually helps. And one quick demo usually solves 90% of the problems. The other 10% of the problems come from people who bounce back and then stop! They are still part of the hey and have to keep moving. So instructions like these sometimes work: "As you come to the middle you will meet someone on a diagonal; bounce off that person and head backwards on the other diagonal, then move left* and come in again; you are going around the same triangle over and over again." *or right, depends on the dance. Note: As you bounce you change direction by just under 90 degrees, it is very easy to let that rotation continue and throw a couple of spins in :-) Happy dancing, John John Sweeney, Dancer, England john(a)modernjive.com 01233 625 362 & 07802 940 574 http://www.modernjive.com for Modern Jive Events, Instructional DVDs and Interactive Maps http://www.contrafusion.co.uk for Contra Dancing in Kent