On 11 May 2025, at 11:58, Jeff Kaufman via Contra Callers <contracallers(a)lists.sharedweight.net> wrote: Interestingly enough I just did this with a mixed group at Contra Camp (our boutique contra weekend at Halsway Manor, in Somerset): as part of a “contra games” workshop we danced Tica Tica Timing anticlockwise. This reversed the rotation of everything in the dance, including the swing, the petronellas (which became retronellas), the promenade (passing right shoulder), and the chain (by the left). By far the hardest thing for dancers was the anticlockwise swing, and the entire exercise was unsurprisingly harder for experienced dancers than new ones. The flow of the choreography helped override their clockwise muscle memory, though, and we had done a chain workshop earlier in the day that had reasonably thoroughly introduced both left- and right-hand chains, so that aspect of the altered dance was probably more familiar than the rest of it! Some years ago (pre-pandemic), I wrote the dance The Reminder to help dancers learn a left-hand chain — because for those traveling across the set, a chain has the same pattern as a hey, although no caller has ever explicitly pointed this out to me. But it’s really important to call attention to the weaving aspect of a chain: new dancers being introduced to both right- and left-hand chains can sometimes suffer from teaching that describes the hand across as a “pull by” when in fact it’s a hand turn halfway. If one teaches it as a half turn, the dancers are facing in the correct direction for the courtesy turn — making it easier for the anchor dancers to step into the courtesy turn on the correct side of and in the correct rotation with the traveling dancers. If dancers think they are doing a pull-by, they head directly for their corner’s place and are going in completely the wrong direction for the courtesy turn. It can also help to teach the anchor dancers to shift into the traveler’s place beside them as it’s vacated — another detail that often gets omitted by callers, who expect dancers to learn this through experience (and indeed some aspects of contra are better learned through doing than teaching, although I believe it’s worth mentioning this point periodically in case people are at a place in their learning journey where they’re ready to hear it). Contra Camp is enthusiastically gender-free and called positionally; with all the dancers dancing both roles, it’s impossible (and meaningless) to make a distinction between a robins’ and a larks’ left-hand chain — so our experience didn’t shed any light on that aspect of Jeff’s comment. Louise (Winchester, UK)

What dancers tend to forget about/not think about/not realize is that the two people involved in a chain are doing quite different moves. One is moving forward and the other backing up. One has to change position and then change orientation to accommodate the courtesy turn. Each learns their own role, but generally doesn’t realize what the other person is doing, or thinks about how they would do that if they were in the other role. When I teach a chain that is other than a “standard” ladies chain, I go back to square one, slowly walking through it to make sure they each know which hand to use, where it should be, which direction they need to be going to get to the courtesy turn. Those who have never role changed before grumble a little at first, but most pick it up and even seem to enjoy experiencing the other role after a few times through. Jim Thaxter Columbia, MO On Sat, May 10, 2025 at 7:46 AM Sam Whited via Contra Callers < contracallers(a)lists.sharedweight.net&gt; wrote:

"When trying a chain left with a group of experienced dancers recently I got a lot of grumbling about how 'difficult' things were, which seems silly, maybe I should start trying to normalize 'this is just like any other move, sometimes you'll go one direction, sometimes the other' " There are a lot of moves we usually do in one direction, from "almost always" (circle left, dosido) to "very nearly 100% of the time" (petronella, contra corners, swing). I see chains as in between these two groups: left hand chains are less common than circle right but more common than left hand contra corners. But I don't see something fundamentally silly about having moves that are only done in one orientation, at which point it's not surprising that the mirror version would be difficult. Jeff On Sat, May 10, 2025 at 7:26 AM Sam Whited via Contra Callers < contracallers(a)lists.sharedweight.net&gt; wrote:

On a slightly tangential note, I've called this a "chain" or a "[right hand role term at this dance] chain", but I kind of like the idea of saying "chain by the right" instead to normalize that it could be in either direction. When trying a chain left with a group of experienced dancers recently I got a lot of grumbling about how "difficult" things were, which seems silly, maybe I should start trying to normalize "this is just like any other move, sometimes you'll go one direction, sometimes the other". —Sam On 2025-05-10 05:24, John Sweeney via Contra Callers wrote: -- Sam Whited sam(a)samwhited.com