Definitely Frannie not Fannie. :-)
~Frannie Marr.
Southern California
On Apr 20, 2015 7:31 PM, "Maia McCormick via Callers" <
callers(a)lists.sharedweight.net> wrote:
> Hmm, I have it written as "Frannie's Alarm Clock"... Is this the dance
> you're looking for?
>
> *Frannie's Alarm Clock* by Luke Donforth (becket, counterclockwise; mod+)
> *A1:* gents alle. L 1 1/2; N swing
> *A2:* long lines, ladies roll next N; ladies chain
> *B1:* half hey; single file circle R in hands-4 (ladies face across,
> gents face partner)
> *B2:* (ladies turn over R shoulder to) gypsy P, swing P
>
> Cheers,
> Maia
>
> On Mon, Apr 20, 2015 at 9:27 PM, Laur via Callers <
> callers(a)lists.sharedweight.net> wrote:
>
>> Does anyone have "Fannie's Alarm Clock" to share?
>>
>> Thanks -
>>
>> Laurie P
>> West MI
>>
>> ~
>> When I dance, I cannot judge, I cannot hate, I cannot separate myself
>> from life. I can only be joyful and whole, that is why I dance. ~Hans Bos~
>> ~
>>
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>>
>>
>
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>
>
Does anyone have "Fannie's Alarm Clock" to share?
Thanks -
Laurie PWest MI ~
When I dance, I cannot judge, I cannot hate, I cannot separate myself from life. I can only be joyful and whole, that is why I dance. ~Hans Bos~
~
Hi Maia,
I used to organize my dance cards by difficulty, but currently, I use
categories in my box that are largely based on dance-defining figures
(Petronella, star promenade) and types of progression (slide left,
circle-pass-through). I find that system of organization to be more useful
when writing out a program for an evening.
Dugan Murphy
dugan(a)duganmurphy.com
Date: Sun, 19 Apr 2015 13:53:01 -0400
> From: Maia McCormick via Callers <callers(a)lists.sharedweight.net>
> To: "callers(a)lists.sharedweight.net" <callers(a)lists.sharedweight.net>
> Subject: [Callers] Difficulty rankings?
> Message-ID:
> <CAHUcZGPHaCuWAZv+d+6EX1aJ7D25CDSvJUFD=
> VLYV8g43Fyr6A(a)mail.gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"
>
> As I overhaul my contra deck and realize that my difficulty ranking system
> is super incoherent, and most of my dance rankings are from way before I
> had any idea what actually makes a dance easy or hard, I've been thinking
> of scrapping this difficulty ranking system and just starting over. So I
> was wondering: if you rank your dances by difficulty, what is your system,
> what are your benchmarks for various difficulty levels, what sorts of
> things do you consider when determining the difficulty of a dance? If you
> DON'T
> rank your dances, why not?
>
> Cheers,
> Maia
>
> ***************************************
>
One of the lessons I learned in a Bruce Hamilton workshop was that the
caller's attitude is a tool and it must be kept sharp. He mentioned the
example of Bob Dalsemer always projecting a strong sense of well-being,
everything is going just fine.
I realized that while my stage presence often did this, too often I also
projected the tension of my worries about the dance -- whether I would be
able to teach something, whether the dancers would "get" it, whether I
could fix a problem if it developed.
So I became more intentional, identifying callers who projected well-being
and trying to copy some of those things they did. I realized it is about
awareness, and about decision-making, and about preparation (knowing the
dances, knowing the music, the band, the crowd...).
Fast forward to yesterday. I was calling an English dance, the music was
going, the room was quiet except for the band (glorious!) and the movement
of the dancers, when a baby -- the several-months-old grandchild of one of
our dancers, began babbling. Not crying, just making noises over the music.
And the part of me that saw it as an interruption was itself interrupted by
the part of me that said, "hey, he's in the right key." So I said that. And
maybe it was only for me, but it made everything OK.
Thank you Bruce and the many others who teach this lesson.
--Jerome
Jerome Grisanti
660-528-0858
http://www.jeromegrisanti.com
“Dance like no one is watching...
Because they are not...
They are checking their phone.
Alan wrote:"A caller can make any dance difficult, and a caller can put across an intrinsically more difficult dance with clarity, confidence, and precise prompting. So some of that suitability of dance to crowd has to deal with the state of the caller. This makes it hard to write down a rating on a card that's going to have meaning when you use it."
Alan: I completely agree. Occasionally, I've found myself bumbling through a walk-through for what seems like an especially boggling dance, only to have the caller announce the dance's familiar title (and on one occasion, the title of a dance I had called without trouble the night before).
Another aspect to consider is the dance flavor of the local community. Depending on the main "crossover dance" (if any) of the majority, the same move can easily be taught to one group while completely flummoxing another. Communities that more frequently dance squares are much more comfortable with pull-bys, for example, while communities with many English Country dancers are less phased by mad robins, heys, etc. I've noticed this more and more as I've started calling dances further away from my home turf, and have begun asking organizers about other popular styles of dance within their community to try to get a sense of this beforehand.
The music is also a major factor in determining difficulty. Is the phrasing hard to hear? Does the phrasing match the dance? Mismatched choreography and music can subtly but profoundly increase the challenge level of a dance. Conversely, an excellent match can make a quirk of a "stretch dance" easier to remember. Matching seems to be especially helpful on dances with isolated balances on the 5th beat (Balance the Hey, for example) instead of the 1st (any dance with a balance and swing). More broadly, selecting dances that the band can't match well seems like an easy recipe for trouble. At one of my early gigs, I couldn't figure out why all of the slinky dances I tried seemed to be giving experienced dancers problems. During the break, someone pointed out that my band had two modes: "bouncy" and "barnburner." The elegant dances I tried to call didn't fit the strengths of the band, and I modified my program for the second half.
-Lindsey DonoTacoma, WA
From: Jerome Grisanti via Callers <callers(a)lists.sharedweight.net>
To: callers <callers(a)lists.sharedweight.net>
Sent: Sunday, April 19, 2015 9:45 PM
Subject: Re: [Callers] Difficulty rankings?
Erik and Alan make good points.
I also think it's worth the exercise to try to rank dances, and individual figures, by difficulty as a way of thinking about what makes a dance hard or easy.
For example:
Which is easier to teach (or to learn): chain, hey, right & left through?
That analysis is worthwhile, even if sorting your cards by such rankings is problematic.
--Jerome
Jerome Grisanti
660-528-0858
http://www.jeromegrisanti.com
“Dance like no one is watching... Because they are not... They are checking their phone.
_______________________________________________
Callers mailing list
Callers(a)lists.sharedweight.net
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Erik and Alan make good points.
I also think it's worth the exercise to try to rank dances, and individual
figures, by difficulty as a way of thinking about what makes a dance hard
or easy.
For example:
Which is easier to teach (or to learn): chain, hey, right & left through?
That analysis is worthwhile, even if sorting your cards by such rankings is
problematic.
--Jerome
Jerome Grisanti
660-528-0858
http://www.jeromegrisanti.com
“Dance like no one is watching...
Because they are not...
They are checking their phone.
Maia --
While you can assign a level of difficulty of dances in isolation, it
doesn't really tell you the whole story. Whatever intrinsic difficulty
the dance possesses interacts with what the floor can do right now and
what the caller can put across. A dance that's easy right after the
break might have been fatally difficult as an opener.
A floor of relatively fit dancers with some level of experience and no
hearing impairment can do things easily that others can't do at all.
A caller can make any dance difficult, and a caller can put across an
intrinsically more difficult dance with clarity, confidence, and precise
prompting. So some of that suitability of dance to crowd has to deal
with the state of the caller. This makes it hard to write down a rating
on a card that's going to have meaning when you use it.
So what makes a dance easy, intrinsically?
- strong flow
- Low piece count
- few or no fractions (some people can't hear, don't process, or won't
do the "and a half" part of 1 and 1/2;
this is recoverable if the next thing is partner swing but bad news
if you need to do something else right
away)
- no action outside the minor set
- clear progression
- symmetry (because if the roles are the same there's less confusion
at the ends)
- recovery point(s); moment of poise
- sticking with your partner
- straightforward end effects
- familiar figures or figures that you can get without drill
When I'm calling for a dance society dance where I have a strong
expectation that there'll be enough people for satisfactory longways
contras through the whole evening and there'll be more experienced
people than beginners and I know the strengths of the band, I make up a
program with what I think is increasing intrinsic difficulty, figure
variety, etc, maybe building up to a medley with all figures in it
handled earlier in the evening if the organizers like medleys, cruising
down to a satisfying low-piece-count strong-flow dance as a finish. (If
it's an old-timey band that doesn't phrase strongly - some do - I try to
avoid dances that need tight timing; mushy Petronellas are annoying.)
But if it's something where I can't get a good read beforehand on
attendance, I have a file of easier contras and a file of harder contras
on my tablet computers and while this dance is running I'm flicking
through the file and picking the next dance based on my current read of
the floor, what figures they know already, what I now think the band can
do, etc.
(You could just have twenty dances memorized and have all the bases
covered, but I like to have a bunch of different choices for the same
niches so that I stay out of the rut of only calling the same twenty
dances in front of the same people, since people dance gypsy all over
Northern California and you'll see the same ones 150 miles apart.)
As you can guess, I don't have a quantified difficulty scale for
dances. I might mark "good opener", and I throw them into the "easier"
or "harder" piles. I don't find it worth doing more than that because
so much of the perceived difficulty is contextual rathe than intrinsic.
-- Alan
On 4/19/15 10:53 AM, Maia McCormick via Callers wrote:
> As I overhaul my contra deck and realize that my difficulty ranking
> system is super incoherent, and most of my dance rankings are from way
> before I had any idea what actually makes a dance easy or hard, I've
> been thinking of scrapping this difficulty ranking system and just
> starting over. So I was wondering: if you rank your dances by
> difficulty, what is your system, what are your benchmarks for various
> difficulty levels, what sorts of things do you consider when
> determining the difficulty of a dance? If you//DON'T rank your dances,
> why not?
>
> Cheers,
> Maia
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Callers mailing list
> Callers(a)lists.sharedweight.net
> http://lists.sharedweight.net/listinfo.cgi/callers-sharedweight.net
As I overhaul my contra deck and realize that my difficulty ranking system
is super incoherent, and most of my dance rankings are from way before I
had any idea what actually makes a dance easy or hard, I've been thinking
of scrapping this difficulty ranking system and just starting over. So I
was wondering: if you rank your dances by difficulty, what is your system,
what are your benchmarks for various difficulty levels, what sorts of
things do you consider when determining the difficulty of a dance? If you DON'T
rank your dances, why not?
Cheers,
Maia
Or swat the flea instead of box the gnat. Then there wouldn't be a hand
switch into the allemande.
-Dave
On 4/16/2015 6:08 PM, Roger Hayes via Callers wrote:
> Hmmm. How about, rather than ring balance:
> neighbor balance, box the gnat,
> switch to left hands, allemand 1 1/2
>
> This might have some educational benefit, as I imagine it's going to
> be painfully awkward unless you give decent weight.
>
> - R
>
>
>
> On Thu, Apr 16, 2015 at 5:51 PM, Kalia Kliban via Callers
> <callers(a)lists.sharedweight.net
> <mailto:callers@lists.sharedweight.net>> wrote:
>
> I'm not entirely clear on what's happening in B2 1-4. One
> possible stumbling point, though, is that pass-throughs are almost
> always by the right shoulder, so you'll need to come up with a
> really strong way to teach that it's left (LEFT, no, the _other_
> left).
>
> Kalia
>
> On 4/16/2015 3:32 PM, Ric Goldman via Callers wrote:
>
> Hi folks,
>
> In the midst of a discussion with some dancers during the
> break at a
> recent gig, this dance sequence came up.Has anyone seen its like?
>
> Allemandery, My Dear Watson – improper
>
> A11-4(New) Nbrs alle R 1-1/2
>
> 5-8Gents alle L 1-1/2 (end in front of and facing Ptnr)
>
> A21-4½ hey (PR, WL, NR, GL)
>
> 5-8Ptnr swing
>
> B11-4Women alle R 1-1/2
>
> 5-8Nbrs swing
>
> B21-4Balance ring; pass by Nbr (pass thru backwards)
> L-shoulder and turn
> back L to…
>
> 5-8(Old) Nbrs alle L 1-1/2 (to next cpl)
>
> Thanx, Ric Goldman
>
>
>
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>
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