New subject: What is a becket?

17 Mar 2012

To pick up on John's point from this side of the pond, there are plenty of
duple improper dances that end with a partner swing for the active couples.

There are quite a few dances which could be started in either becket
formation or duple improper, allowing further scope in the pairing of dance
and music: i recently had the challenge of trying to pair a dance with
"Staten Island Hornpipe", which has very assertive balances in measures 3
and 4 of the b-part. One of the few satisfying moves there would be "walk
in to wavy lines", but off the cuff i couldn't think of any dances with
those "trip to" wavy lines in the B part (I'm sure they're out there,
though....). Becket variations of existing dances provided some options.

I guess what i'm [being overly abstract about] here is the idea that saying
a dance requires certain moves to be a "becket dance" - or that a certain
formation precludes certain moves - unnecessarily confines the form.
Associating a dance with the composer's intended "starting formation"
allows us to not only focus on the choreographic flow that starting
formation provides, but to create variations when it's advantageous.

Message: 1
...
  Date: Fri, 16 Mar 2012 17:05:20 -0000
 From: "John Sweeney" &lt;info(a)contrafusion.co.uk&gt;
 To: &lt;callers(a)sharedweight.net&gt;
 Subject: Re: [Callers] What is a Becket
 Message-ID: <6E7516378A0B4D8CADD73426CE5E3BD1@study>
 Content-Type: text/plain;       charset="us-ascii"

 Becky Nankivell said:
 "A duple improper can't have a partner swing as the last move."

 Lots of old duple improper dances do - the swing is just across the set
 instead of along the side.  And some modern dances do the same, perhaps
 more on this side of the Atlantic.

 Of course you have to careful calling one like that if the hall is too
 crowded lengthwise.

            Happy dancing,
                   John

 John Sweeney, Dancer, England   john(a)modernjive.com 01233 625 362 &
 07802 940 574
 http://www.modernjive.com for Modern Jive Events & DVDs
 http://www.contrafusion.co.uk for Dancing in Kent

Re: [Callers] What is a becket?