Hi all. Several times a year I go through my cards and try to throw out dances that turned out not to be as great as I thought they were when I collected them. This round, several transitions are sticking out for me as being awkward. The first is a ladies chain to a circle L with the same group of 4. The courtesy turn ends with both dancers' momentum going more toward a circle R than circle L. I find this transition even worse when the ladies chain is on the L diagonal followed by a circle L with the couple across. On a R&L through followed by a circle L, I recommend that the dancers use a California twirl instead of a courtesy turn and that gets around that courtesy turn to circle L transition. Am I being a bit too anal about this? There are just so many dances available, I feel like I need to get down to this level of detail to weed some out. The second transition that I see a lot, especially in Cary Ravitz dances is swing to star (L or R) in same group of 4. For this one, one of the swingee's needed hand will be around their swinging partner and it's awkward to extricate it to make the star. In some dances, depending on what follows the star, I can replace the star with a Long Lines F&B which fixes it. I talked to several of you at NEFFA about another transition that really bugs me: from a hey which has a R shoulder pass in the middle to a swing on the side. Whoever finishes the hey first, has to make an immediate change in momentum (since they just passed L on the side) to get into a swing. Some dances alleviate the problem by using a balance and swing instead of just a swing, but that only works if there's enough time. Any thoughts? Like I said, I'm getting way down to the details to come up with reasons to weed out dances. Do you have suggestions for making these transitions smoother? Are there other transitions you personally try to avoid? Thanks, Lynn