Hi everyone, I had written this response to Ken’s question, and inadvertently sent it to him rather than the whole list. —— Hi Ken, Speaking for myself as a dancer, and as a person with ADHD and consequent subtle memory challenges, I find myself constructing a mental map of the flow of the entire set during walkthrough and early repeats to help me navigate the remainder of the dance. The more specific and complete the information I receive is, the more complete the initial model, and the less I have to literally keep relearning it as the dance proceeds. Being specifically informed CCW vs CW is a nugget that saves me the work of inferring which general model to use. It’s all slowly falling apart and will soon enough be gone completely. Easier to be replacing bricks at the top of the wall than to be constantly relaying the first course. I don’t have an autism diagnosis, but from my personal experience relating to those who do, I’d guess it may help at least some to be told explicitly what to expect at the whole-dance level. Going into a situation expecting one construct and ending up in a different one could be stressful. Finally, as to why people prefer or are indifferent to a priori meta-information about the dance sequence, I liken it to what happens when the band gets lost, puts in an extra phrase, and gets out of phase with the choreography. Some dancers are unperturbed, others get driven right up the wall. I’m the latter sort, as you might have guessed :-). How are all these people just dancing around this huge hole in the wall? Or maybe a better comparison is teaching a non-32-bar dance built around such music. Tell me ahead of time and it’ll save me some necessary mental steps. If not, I’ll notice and incorporate it soon enough. I’ll be fine, but depending on the night it could cost me disproportionate cognitive resources that I’m having to manage carefully. Thanks for asking the question - I appreciate your curiosity. It gave me a chance to examine for myself why things like that help me. -Joseph On Tue, Feb 20, 2024 at 2:15 PM Ken Panton via Contra Callers < contracallers(a)lists.sharedweight.net&gt; wrote:

To Ken -  For this dance it is *not* about progression direction. In this dance the confusion comes from an ambiguous allemande turn (orbit to allemande partner 1 + 1/4, but after the orbit, the start position of the allemande is "fluid"). In this case you and your partner need to work out who is going up and who is going down the line to a "shadow" and returning immediately to swing partner. I suspect that the particular confusion at the weekend was someone who realized that their shadow was the wrong gender role and thus something might not be right. In my walk through for this move, I let the dancers discover with their partner, from where, how much, and to which direction that allemande works. Most will stick to this through the whole dance, but the playful and clever will realize that they can swap directions at will. Since you're coming back to your partner immediately, it really doesn't matter who's there for the shadow allemande. (But it's still confusing to some who wonder why they sometimes have one shadow and other times another.) Timothy Knoxville TN On Tue, 2024-02-20 at 17:44 -0500, Harris Lapiroff via Contra Callers wrote:

I think some dancers know which way they're expecting to progress as soon as they line up and it makes them think they've gotten something wrong during the walkthrough if they progress the "wrong" way. I find it's helpful for dancers like that to be prepared, since they're often your first line of defense in helping guide confused dancers on the floor, so I'll usually throw in a quick "this dance is becket *right*, for those who know what that means" (or "for those who care" if I'm feeling cheekier). Harris Lapiroff Dance Caller and Organizer Boston Intergenerational Dance Advocates Board (Cambridge MA) Pinewoods Camp, Inc Board (Plymouth MA) https://chromamine.com/contra/ On Tue, Feb 20, 2024, at 5:14 PM, Ken Panton via Contra Callers wrote:

Michael Fuerst wrote: That "egg beater" orbit overlap with the adjacent set is something that is either immediately intuitive to dancers, or it's not, it seems. And the interaction is fun (to me, therefore surely to you, too! lol) with surprised ladies/ robins finding an interloping gent/ lark (or vice versa, certainly) momentarily disturbing their allemande. It's also a lot smoother than doing "the squeeze" interpretive dance step that is the alternative to that overlap unless the whole set is stretched out to an indecently non-intimate degree! :)

The dance is named "Trip to Phan Reel" The composer, Susan Kevra, wrote it on the way to a Thanksgiving gathering. Only in the past several years have callers realized that those orbiting [counter]clockwise should pass [lef]right with the person in an adjacent foursome if needed. I suspect that callers in the initial walkthrough should say something like "Larks orbit clockwise passing right shoulders with the gent passed in the center if convenient"