I think Rich's point about the tempo signals is worth highlighting!!
Before I realized that I needed to specifically discuss this with the band in advance, I had a few mishaps where my enthusiastic raising-and-re-raising of my hands was taken to mean that I wanted to the band to play LOUDER, and my calming-lowering-of-my-hands gestures were taken to mean I wanted them to play quieter :)

And-- Just for anyone else who wasn't in the know, I wrote to Rich and he explained to me that "piece count" means the number of figures in the dance.  I did not know that :)
Kat K Hfx
Rich Goss
Thursday, September 5, 2024 10:02 AM
Just to add a couple of thoughts Katherine triggered.   The piece count of a dance has a bearing on the tempo.  Higher the piece count, generally the slower the tempo and vice versa.  Also, I like to make clear up front my signals for speeding up or slowing down.   

Rich

Katherine Kitching via Contra Callers
Thursday, September 5, 2024 9:43 AM
Hi John (and everyone), just catching up on the listserv and went to your "Callers and Music" page--

very helpful info there!
I wish I had found it last year when I was looking for resources for this caller-and-musician workshop that we did.

In particular, I had searched all over the internet last year for some clue as to how many times through a typical improper duple contra dance would run, and had a real hard time finding that info.

I had concluded that with 5 duples in a set (our usual), we might dance through up to 17 times, which would take about 9 minutes at 117bpm..... so that those who started at the top would get back to the top.

Do you think that's too long?

I was under the impression that in the US the lines are often longer than 5 duples, and that the convention was to dance long enough to let everyone travel up and down the line the whole way....so I was thinking that in a seasoned contra dance group the dance might go on 15 minutes or more?

Very curious about this now!

Kat Kitching in Halifax NS

Sep 4, 2024 3:16:24 PM John Sweeney via Contra Callers <contracallers@lists.sharedweight.net>:



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