Re: [Callers] Community/Family dance

Gale wrote: Bastringue. These are delightful community dances for teens and adults, but may fail as family dances. In those 'families with children', young children may be unwilling to leave their parents (so you get three-or-four-person 'couples', and swings, etc, may be difficult), and dances may end up being unphrased. With progressive dances in general (duple or triple minors, or mixers where you go on to a new partner) you need to be with the music or things will break down, so choosing those dances can set the dancers up for a failure. Of course you never know what you're going to have to deal with until you're there and the people turn up for it. Watch out! In the interested-in-dancing world, people are looking for variety and contrast throughout the evening. In the community dance/ONS world, you're not looking to make every dance a new challenge - each dance needs to be really accessible. So if it's just like the last dance except you have arches instead of pass through, that's probably okay. But to be accessible - not for added variety, because the crowd doesn't really need added variety - I think you should also be looking for scatter mixers and whole set dances. You don't have to use 'em if you get a suitable audience for your duple minors, but if you've got a bunch of kids at your dance, or slightly toasted adults, you'll want em. A couple of excellent books: Marian Rose's "Step Lively" and "Step Lively 2". (I bet "Step Lively 3" is great too, but I don't have it and can't vouch for it.) "Blobs", in the first book, is a contra formation whole set dance for family groups; it's helpful. So is Sasha! The other dances are good for this environment as well, and there's an accompanying CD. Dudley Laufman's "Sir Roger de Coverly's Whole Set Catalog", although I think this is out of print now. The "Community Dances Manuals" (published by the English Folk Dance & Song Society but available in the US through the Country Dance & Song Society at www.cdss.org/sales ) have a ton of easy whole set dances with suggested tunes. You might be interested in "Cumberland Square 8", "Up the Sides and Down the Middle", "Circle Waltz".) You can google around for dance notes on many of these things. A web site with useful dance notation, including most of the ones I call out for CDM: http://homepage.ntlword.com/greenery/BarnDances/ToC.html Check out these dances: Pat-a-cake Polka (make it an open two hands instead of ballroom position for the chassays, and the dance works beautifully for 7 and up.) [Here are differentish square and contra-formation dances, not particularly suitable for kids-too-small-to-leave-parents, but very accessible to, eg, 10-year-olds.] Strip the Willow Leaving for Barbados (needs six-couple sets, but very cool) OXO Reel Cumberland Square 8 Hope this helps! -- Alan -- =============================================================================== Alan Winston --- WINSTON(a)SSRL.SLAC.STANFORD.EDU Disclaimer: I speak only for myself, not SLAC or SSRL Phone: 650/926-3056 Paper mail to: SSRL -- SLAC BIN 99, 2575 Sand Hill Rd, Menlo Park CA 94025 ===============================================================================