12 Sep
2024
12 Sep
'24
5:05 a.m.
A minor point looking to the future: Most Beckett dances have a
clockwise progression, not counterclockwise. I would suggest getting
your community accustomed to the clockwise direction of progression. As
you start to draw from the canon of dances, you will have far more to
choose from with that progression. And the ones that go
counterclockwise tend, I think, to be more challenging. Often the
instructions lining up are, starting with duple minor configuration,
"Take hands four from the top and circle left one place into Beckett
formation." This builds in a little muscle memory of the progression
direction and puts the ones moving down the hall.
Dave Harding
Dancing in the Chicago area and across the Midwest
On 9/11/2024 10:30 AM, Katherine Kitching via Contra Callers wrote:
Hi all- here in Halifax, to keep things simple for our
beginner-full/generally unskilled group, we never dance in Becket
formation these days.
But Luke's original post has suddenly got me "seeing the light" about
how I could use simple beckets as a way to get beginner people dancing
in contra lines without worrying about the complexities of ejection
and getting ppl to remember to change places when ejected. (And also
avoiding the strange feeling of how the dance symmetry changes when
you switch from moving up the hall to down the hall or vice versa).
So I'm going to test it out with my group...
But I realize it's been a while since I danced a Becket and I forget
some of the basic mechanics.
I just tried googling but could not easily find the info I was looking
for...
so-- apologies for asking such a basic question here-- but I trust it
will be an efficient way to find an answer :)
First off just a bit of info on my plan--
, I plan for now to try out only very simple Beckets where everyone
comes back to their home place after every figure.
So i'll be explaining the progression as sliding CCW (I'm gonna go
with CCW progression only, for now) 2 places, until you are in a new
duple.
(we may play on simple variations of this like going forward in lines
towards the old couple, and veering backwards towards the new couple
as in the first dance Luke presented here).
I understand that if there is an odd number of couples, then every
time the dance runs through, a couple will be ejected, either at the
top or the bottom.
My question is-- if there is an EVEN number of couples, then are two
couples ejected, top and bottom, every second time??
Or, does the progression just involve a big fast turn for the people
at the top and bottom of the giant oval, so that they always meet a
new couple, every single time?
thanks all for your help :)
Kat k
_______________________________________________
Contra Callers mailing list --contracallers(a)lists.sharedweight.net
To unsubscribe send an email tocontracallers-leave(a)lists.sharedweight.net