How to Call a Petronella Turn? also named figures - Contra Callers

25 Nov 2012

Chrissy Fowler wrote:
...
 > Seems most people most of the time balance the
ring toward the center and back.  Was it formerly more of a balance right then left?  

Colin Hume wrote:
...
  In the original (Scottish) dance it was a
"set" rather than a "balance", and that would be to the right and
left. 

Current SCD styling has setting being pretty much on the spot (even for balance-in-line),
though I'm not sure how much that is a C20th invention of Miss Milligan's. Both
the Petronella turn and the set are done with the setting step. The contra style
balance-the-ring-and-Petronella occurs a couple of SCDs e.g. Back to the Fireside.

Beth Parkes wrote:
...
  One of the contra dance traditions has been a small
set of named moves and, for the most part, directional names for any new moves. So, for
example,  we say, "Pass through to an ocean wave," instead of "Pass the
ocean." Please, please fight any tendency to give obscure names for moves. If it is
not descriptive, it is not appropriate. 
Named figures are a shorthand that lets the caller concisely call a figure that
they've already described. Unless you're going to call every movement every time,
there's no particular harm in using a name that's not descriptive, as long as
it's been explained. Pass the Ocean is actually a good example of this, as describing
the movements would be more like "pass through, ladies catching LH and turning a
quarter, men taking partner's RH at the far end of the line", though I'd
avoid putting too many such figures on a programme unless I knew the dancers were familiar
with them. Contra already includes many jargon terms it would be impractical to do without
- gypsy, balance, cast &c. Petronella is far from obscure, and is the word I would use
to call the movement once I'd walked it through. But I come from an SCD background
where we have many more long figures that have extremely non-descriptive names (Espagnole,
Tourbillon, Schiehallion Reel &c.).

and:
...
  And I was doing the two's variation in Petronella
which uses a left turn back in the early 80s. 
Can you describe this in more detail? If you spin to the left, don't you crash into
the 1s spinning to the right?

Edmund Croft,
Cambridge, UK