On Wed, Jun 10, 2015, Michael Barraclough via Callers wrote: I'd do one, maybe two MWSD tips as demos (assuming you call MWSD). Otherwise, treat basically the same as any other contra night that has lots of beginners (maybe with more mixers). The square dancers will be more experienced than the non-dancers, but they will struggle a bit with the differences in styling and the phrasing focus (unless they've had previous contra experience). If you have a chance ahead of time, maybe rehearse contra-style buzz-step swing with the square dancers (definitely make clear that they can do a walking swing instead). You might want to send this to the square dance club, it explains how contra dances work from a square dancer perspective: http://www.tiac.net/~mabaker/how-contra-dances-work.html Because gay MWSD almost exclusively uses gendered terminology to interoperate with straight squares, your choice whether to make this a gender-free dance (I'd consult with the club). You might ping Kris Jensen (gay square caller in ABQ who also does contra), she may have specific suggestions due to some familiarity with Desert Valley. http://krisjensen.com/ kris(a)squarez.com -- Hugs and backrubs -- I break Rule 6 http://rule6.info/ <*> <*> <*> Help a hearing-impaired person: http://rule6.info/hearing.html

On Wed, Jun 10, 2015, Michael Barraclough wrote: and on Jun 10, 2015, at 10:52 AM, Aahz Maruch responded with some suggestions, on which I offer my comments. I think the decision about whether to have any MWSD tip(s) belongs to the relevant organizers in the sponsoring organizations (PHX Trad Music & Dance and Desert Valley Squares Club). If there is such a tip, DVSC might want to supply their own caller for it. An MWSD tip could be a pure performance/demo with a pre-planned set of participants (think of a demo that a Morris team might do during the break at a local contra dance). Or it could be a tip where anyone present who dances MWSD (Mainstream, Plus, or whatever the caller designates) is invited to join in. Such an invitation could offer a chance for contra dancers to see that some of their contradancing friends also enjoy MWSD, but it could also carry the risk that some overconfident non-MWSDer (or some person who wasn't paying attention to the announcement about what was going on) might join in, be totally over their head, and keep their entire square in a state of near-constant chaos. In any case, the logistics should be worked out in advance: How much MWSD, if any, will there be? (For example, one tip, consisting of a patter call and a singing call in the same squares, with no walk-throughs.) When in the program will it happen? Will it use live or recorded music? If it's recorded music, the MWSD caller need to make arrangements with the sound tech. If it's live music from the same band that's playing for the contras, the band may need to be in on the planning (picking a singing call tune, being sure that they still have enough of a break). ... If you have access to a copy of Tony Parkes's book _Contra Dance Calling: A Basic Text_, you might have a look at his remarks about calling contras to MWSDers. As Tony points out, an important difference between MWSDers and other new contra dancers is that most new dancers simply don't know a lot of the things experienced contradancers know, but with MWSDers, you may be surprised at the mix of what things they know and what things they don't know. Also there are terms they "know" but with a different interpretation than in contradancing. For some moves, MWSDers use different styling than contra dancers (or trad square dancers). For example, you may see forearm holds for allemandes and a very unconnected "palms in" styling for stars. http://www.squaredance.or.jp/sdtext/sdtextdata/bm-star4.jpg Be prepared to teach the prevalent local styling during the newcomers' session (if there is one) or during the the main dance. You might explicitly acknowledge the styling differences and explain that you're not claiming that one style or another is better or more authentic, but that the styling you're teaching is "the way we do it here." MWSDers may be used to dancing "forward and back" in six beats, or even as few as four beats, and with no regard to the musical phrase. You might want to program a dance or two early in the evening that invite going forward and back on phrase. An example might be a circle mixer that ends with a promenade and that starts with everyone going forward and back twice, with clearly-timed calling, and with the band playing in a way that clearly indicates the phrasing. My idea is that this could give the MWSDers an experience of what you mean by "dancing to the phrase" that would help some of them pick up on the idea and start applying it to other figures as well. I'm not saying that everyone will pick up on it, but I think the experience could be more effective than simply hearing the caller prattle on about "blah blah eight beats blah blah to the phrase blah blah." (I'd be interested in reading comments from any readers who started doing contra *after* having already learned MWSD and who can remember details of their own experience of learning the idea of phrasing.) In recent years, contra dancing has borrowed a number of figures from MWSD. In MWSD, those figures likely have precise definitions, including rules about which way dancers end up facing. (This precision enables MWSDers to do the figures in unexpected sequences with no walk-through.) When terms from MWSD enter the contra world, they may become "folk-processed" by contra callers who haven't taken the trouble to study the MWSD definitions. I won't go into details because anyone who cares to can easily find the CALLERLAB definition documents, and anyone who doesn't care isn't likely to read a long exposition by me. A swing can work quite nicely with one person walking and the other doing a buzz step. I think the following points are bigger issues for MWSDers getting introduced to contra: * MWSDers generally aren't used to doing long swings. * MWSDers generally aren't used to the idea of ending a swing a the end of a phrase of music. (A number of years ago on a different electronic forum, a very experienced and intelligent MWSDer mentioned that the one time she'd been to a contra dance, she never did figure out how many beats a swing was supposed to take. Of course nothing in her MWSD experience had prepared her to imagine that the length of a swing might depend on where in the music it starts.) * MWSDers may be unaccustomed to the idea of ending swings facing a designated direction with "gent" on the left and "lady" on the right. (When they swing and promenade with corners, they do have "gent" on the left in the promenade. But they might not automatically generalize that rule to contexts like "Swung your neighbor and face across". I agree that the article Aahz ("Explaining Traditional Squares and Contras to MWSD folks" by Clark Baker) is excellent. Certainly ask the people who booked you about terminology. If you end up using gendered terminology (as I think is likely), you can of course explain that people's physical characteristics needn't match their gender roles. Yes, asking advice from someone likely to have relevant knowledge sounds like a good idea. I hope some of this will be useful. --Jim