11 Feb
2014
11 Feb
'14
5:34 p.m.
On 2/11/2014 4:11 PM, Dave Casserly wrote:
I find experienced dancers often take longer than 6
beats to circle three
places. Regardless of whether callers should be teaching to beginners
during a walkthrough, it can help experienced dancers to hear exactly how
many counts a move should take in a particular dance. It's something a lot
of ECD callers do, but you don't see it much in contra.
This may be a specific instance of something I have noticed from
time to time. I will be talking to a person who would undoubtedly
describe themselves as an experienced dancer, one who has been doing
contra dance for many years. I will say something in passing about the
length, in beats, of a given figure or about the 64 beat length of a
contra dance and they will look surprised, because it has never occurred
to them that figures have a specific length, or that all contra dances
are the same length, or that the music and dance go together. This
sometimes surprises me as well, in the case of people I know for certain
have been present many times when these sort of things were mentioned by
the caller. So it may be that callers are telling the dancers the
number of beats they have for a given figure, I know that I do this
fairly often, but the dancers fail to absorb the information for one
reason or another.
Jonathan
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Jonathan Sivier
Caller of Contra, English and Early American Dances
jsivier AT illinois DOT edu
Dance Page: http://www.sivier.me/dance_leader.html
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Q: How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?
A: It depends on what dance you call!