Re: [Callers] Cornish 6-hand reel timing

--- Rickey wrote: In the dance Cornish 6-hand reel there is a hey for 6 (not a surprise given the name of the dance). Several sources agree that this gets 32 beats of music (B1 and B2), which seems like too much music. --- end of quote --- I'll get to this particular dance in a moment, but first a digression: One of the tasks dancers face as they become more skilled is to make their dancing fit the music. Thus, on a simple figure such as right and left through (the full version, over and back), while this certainly can be accomplished in far fewer than 16 steps, experienced dancers have learned to slow down a little, to enjoy the time-- four steps to cross, four steps to turn, and the same on the way back. One of the strongest things that we in the contra and traditional square dance community have going for us is that close connection with the music. Modern Western Square Dance, for example, no longer has everything fitting the music, and moves which we would do in, say, 8 steps, they often do in six, thereby losing that connection with the musical phrases. As a further aside, many intermediate level dancers have the same difficulty fitting their movements to the phrase, hence the appearance of all those extra twirls, designed to fill up the time while they're waiting for the next move. And now, to the topic at hand: I've never danced Cornish 6-hand reel, but I danced the Dorset 4-hand reel just a few weeks ago. In many of these traditional English dances the dancers aren't just moving with a simple walking step as we do in contras. They move with a variety of steps, such as rants or polka steps. We actually see some of that tradition in the sort of shuffle clog two-step that some older dancers prefer-- watch Dudley Laufman on the dance floor, for example, dancing Chorus Jig. On that simple down the outside and back, he doesn't take 7 or 8 long steps down the outside, but rather three or four two-steps, moving only a short way down and a short way back. Now, the question is, if you want to introduce Cornish 6-hand-reel, do you want to take your allotment of talking time at the mic to introduce the notion of stepping to your dancers? In some situations you may decide it's worth the effort and the time-- you're presenting a dance which seems quite similar but actually has an added challenge for folks to explore-- or you may decide that it's not appropriate for that given venue. Hope this is helpful. David