I haven’t looked in detail at your (Jeremy’s) post, but quite a few of the “who goes
first” questions are answered with “first diagonals” or “second diagonals”—which would be
new terminology for folks who haven’t done English country dancing, but it’s pretty easy
to learn. I agree that ending the swing, though, is difficult to easily describe by
position.
There was a contra dance in the States 1981-89 that used calling based on position, “Les
be Gay and Dance,” in Minneapolis, Minnesota. I believe Carol Ormand was quite involved
with that dance, but I don’t think she’s on this list. (You’ll find references to that
dance online that say that style of calling in contra ended up being unsustainable, but as
far as I can tell all of that traces back to one article, and that article doesn’t give
its sources.)
I wrote the
lcfd.org piece on GF English calling; The Heather and the Rose
http://heatherandrose.org/terms.shtml is another place to look. (This has been called
“global terminology” for quite a long time.)
Read Weaver
Jamaica Plain, MA
http://lcfd.org
On Jul 6, 2017, at 11:27 AM, Mark Hillegonds via
Callers <callers(a)lists.sharedweight.net> wrote:
Hi, Jeremy,
The Lavender Country and Folk Dancers (LCFD) use some positional references in their
gender-free English Country Dances. Might want to check it out:
http://lcfd.org/gf-ecd-calling-conventions.html
<http://lcfd.org/gf-ecd-calling-conventions.html>
Looking forward to hearing more about this as others respond.
On Thu, Jul 6, 2017 at 10:30 AM, Jeremy Child via Callers
<callers(a)lists.sharedweight.net <mailto:callers@lists.sharedweight.net>>
wrote:
Hi Everyone
In the past there has been a lot of discussion on this group about gender free calling,
and in particular about the terms used for the two roles.
This got me thinking as to whether it would be possible to eliminate the use of role
names and call using just positional references.
Some significant thought later, I came up with a system that I believe could, in theory,
work. This is largely an intellectual exercise rather than a serious suggestion, but I
would appreciate any comments / feedback / thoughts / ideas you have.
The details are at:
http://barndancecaller.net/PositionalCalling.html
<http://barndancecaller.net/PositionalCalling.html>
(There is a link to another document I have written about gender free calling - this is
primarily aimed at English Barn Dance / Ceilidh calling.)
Jeremy
--
Mark Hillegonds
Cell: 734-756-8441
Email: mark.hillegonds(a)gmail.com <mailto:mark.hillegonds@gmail.com>