Import1 October 2018

import1@lists2.sharedweight.net

26 participants
34 discussions

by Tepfer, Seth

I find Monkey in the Middle (by Sherry Nevins) a friendly variant of Ninepins. You are choosing a partner rather than scrambling and a person feeling left out. Sent from my iPhone > On Jan 31, 2018, at 3:59 PM, Chris Page via Callers <callers(a)lists.sharedweight.net> wrote: > > Ninepins? > > -Chris Page > San Diego, CA > > On Tue, Jan 30, 2018 at 10:23 AM, Sue via Callers > <callers(a)lists.sharedweight.net> wrote: >> Sure they're all fun (we hope). I'm looking for a few dances that are >> particularly playful, quirky, silly....something that typically gets the >> dancers laughing. >> >> You get the idea. What are your favorites? >> >> Sue Gola >> Princeton, NJ > _______________________________________________ > List Name: Callers mailing list > List Address: Callers(a)lists.sharedweight.net > Archives: https://www.mail-archive.com/callers@lists.sharedweight.net/ ________________________________ This e-mail message (including any attachments) is for the sole use of the intended recipient(s) and may contain confidential and privileged information. If the reader of this message is not the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that any dissemination, distribution or copying of this message (including any attachments) is strictly prohibited. If you have received this message in error, please contact the sender by reply e-mail message and destroy all copies of the original message (including attachments).

5 years, 5 months

Re: [Callers] New dance, written by me! (It's my first) (Liam Binley)

by Liam Binley

Suddenly realised that the way I had copied the dance into the email hadn’t worked so here it is. Never Forgotten Longways: Beckett A1: (8) {L diagonal} Circle L ¾; (8) Neighbour swing. A2: (8) Lines forward & back; (8) Mad robin {men in front}. B1: (16) Ricochet reel {men pass L to start, ladies push back 2nd time they meet}. B2: (16) Partner balance & swing. Many Thanks, Liam Binley. liam.binley(a)me.com

5 years, 11 months

[Callers] New dance, written by me! (It's my first)

by Liam Binley

Afternoon all, So, whilst on a half term break from working in a school, I set myself a challenge to write my first dance… and I’ve done it. I have tried it with a small group of confident dancers to check that it works! But I am yet to try it on a big group, hoping to try it out in the next few weeks. I have copied it below so if you would like to give it a go, please do, and let me know what you think! The name (Never Forgotten) as you can probably guess, is a personal one, I don’t know what people think about giving dances names which have some personal meaning behind them, but for me, with a certain event coming up (I won’t divulge on here) it just seemed right. I have got a suggested track to use for it, but would rather people asked me directly about that, to be honest it would fit with most 32 bar reels.. I just have a preference. Anyway, let me know what you think, Many Thanks, Liam Binley. liam.binley(a)me.com

5 years, 11 months

Re: [Callers] Callers Digest, Vol 54, Issue 14

by Darlene Hamilton

Hi Allison, I would echo Alan and Rich... especially if the folks LIKED those dances. I have run many beginner dancers events over the last ten years and folks want to do the dances they enjoyed from last time (sometimes you have to remind them that you have other new fun dances to teach too). :-) The one complaint I have heard from long time dancers are that some of the dance groups don't repeat favorite dances often enough in a goal to do as many different dances over the course of a year as possible so keep that “fun” factor in mind when selecting them. You have a nice list of dances! Don't forget about the classic Sicillian Circle dance where there's clapping and hooting when the gents go in then the ladies go in. Folks love to clap and hoot and it brings up the energy! Let us know how it went! Darlene Historical Tea & Dance Society Pasadena, CA On Wed, Oct 24, 2018 at 1:44 PM <callers-request(a)lists.sharedweight.net> wrote: > Send Callers mailing list submissions to > callers(a)lists.sharedweight.net > > To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit > > http://lists.sharedweight.net/listinfo.cgi/callers-sharedweight.net > or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to > callers-request(a)lists.sharedweight.net > > You can reach the person managing the list at > callers-owner(a)lists.sharedweight.net > > When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific > than "Re: Contents of Callers digest..." > > > Today's Topics: > > 1. "Second" ONS (Allison Jonjak) > 2. Re: "Second" ONS (Winston, Alan P.) > 3. Re: "Second" ONS (Rich Sbardella) > 4. Re: "Second" ONS (jim saxe) > > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > > Message: 1 > Date: Wed, 24 Oct 2018 12:25:51 -0500 > From: Allison Jonjak <allisonjonjak(a)gmail.com> > To: callers(a)sharedweight.net > Subject: [Callers] "Second" ONS > Message-ID: > < > CAK2+5bksFF_tEGH_YZcFuYn8qHJFw1BfdGagg2D5NSQJevL1Qg(a)mail.gmail.com> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" > > Hi all, > > I hail from a rural area with no nearby dance communities. This June I held > a free community barn dance, featuring lots of Linda Leslie's "very easy > dances". Through the magic of newspapers I was able to connect with a > string band, and we had about 25 dancers, lots of whom left their email > addresses 'so you can invite us again next time.' > > I'll head home for the holidays, the band is willing and the hall is > willing, so I'm planning to host another dance. The question is: should I > prepare > -the same dances > -the same easiness-level of dances, but different actual dances > -a dance or two that uses progressions? > > The dancers in June learned very quickly, and aced the proto-progressions > in both Jefferson & Liberty, and Peak Bagger. > > How much of that practice in June do I expect to carry forward to > November? Here was the program I wound up calling, > https://contradb.com/programs/76 , pardon that the calling notes are mixed > in with my followup notes. Here were the dances I had prepared: > https://contradb.com/programs/71 > > Thanks all in advance for your help! > > -- > Allison Jonjak, M.S., E.I.T. > allisonjonjak(a)gmail.com > allisonjonjak.com >

5 years, 11 months

Re: [Callers] super-simple square for rollaway practice was: "Second" ONS

by Winston, Alan P.

Allison wrote (responding to Jim): > >Notes on the roll away dance say "succeeded at walkthrough, weren't > going to make it through the dance." If you could tell, did the > confusion seem to have to do with figuring out who was in what role, > or was it mostly about something else, such as getting from the star > to the lines of four? > > I think that the difficulty was that there were TWO roles to remember: > a person was a head OR a side, AND a raven OR a lark. That was too > much intricacy for people who don't know at least one of the roles on > autopilot. Lesson learned. > > > >[Two side comments on that dance: (1) Notes say "This variation is > Wade Pearson's, removing the right-left-through. ...", but the > "original" version you link to doesn't have a right and left through. > It has a cross trail. (2) Personally, I don't think it would be a > great loss to drop this dance from the repertoire, regardless of the > role terminology or the manner of setting up the lines of four. I > could say more on both points but don't want to go even further off > topic.] > > Agreed, I really wanted something with a rollaway since it's my > favorite move for "teaching giving weight," but it seems to require > intricate choreography to get people back to place. I hoped the square > would do it, but I overshot the audience. They were gracious when I > had us switch, at least :) > I'm interested in the rollaway for "teaching giving weight"; I mostly beat allemandes to death. Anyway, you might get to your goal with this dance which barely has choreography(La Guaracha, from "Companion to the Ballroom" 1827, here from the COmmunity Dances Manuals): ======================= SPANISH WALTZ (CDM, any 32-bar waltz, esp. "My Lodging is on the Cold Ground") Four couple square. A1&2: Balance forward, back, left hand woman to man's right hand. Four times. B: Waltz the set. ================================= That A1 is balance and roll away (with gent not half-sashaying); four times gets everybody home. For a barn dance where you can't rely on everybody being able to do a traveling waltz, you can easily adapt this in multiple ways; first off, sub a promenade for the waltz, or sub a circle left and promenade home. second, you can just make it duple meter if you prefer, and then make it balance and swing and promenade. Third, you can change it to be roll away with a half sashay, and it's more important to reach your partner than to get home on the rollaways; the promenade takes care of that. Fourth, change the figure to 1st time: all balance, ravens roll left to right in front of larks (start crossing neighbor) 4x 2nd time: all balance, larks roll left to right in front of ravens (start partner) (For ONS you might be fine just repeating those two times, but if you're a little ambitious ... 3d time: all balance, ravens roll left to right 2x, / all balance, larks roll left to right 2x, meet partner on other side ... Anyway, it's barely choreography but it gives you rollaway practice in square formation without having to do heads or sides. -- Alan

5 years, 11 months

Re: [Callers] "Second" ONS

by Winston, Alan P.

In general, I'd say to prepare mostly the same easiness-level of dances, mostly different dances, a repeat of whatever the most popular dance was, and have a couple slightly more challenging ones - with progression, etc - up your sleeve but without any emotional investment in actually using them. Expect very little to carry over to a second dance five months later. Maybe more facility in getting lined up, but also (if you're lucky) they'll bring friends with no experience. -- Alan On 10/24/18 10:25 AM, Allison Jonjak via Callers wrote: Hi all, I hail from a rural area with no nearby dance communities. This June I held a free community barn dance, featuring lots of Linda Leslie's "very easy dances". Through the magic of newspapers I was able to connect with a string band, and we had about 25 dancers, lots of whom left their email addresses 'so you can invite us again next time.' I'll head home for the holidays, the band is willing and the hall is willing, so I'm planning to host another dance. The question is: should I prepare -the same dances -the same easiness-level of dances, but different actual dances -a dance or two that uses progressions? The dancers in June learned very quickly, and aced the proto-progressions in both Jefferson & Liberty, and Peak Bagger. How much of that practice in June do I expect to carry forward to November? Here was the program I wound up calling, https://contradb.com/programs/76 , pardon that the calling notes are mixed in with my followup notes. Here were the dances I had prepared: https://contradb.com/programs/71 Thanks all in advance for your help! -- Allison Jonjak, M.S., E.I.T. allisonjonjak(a)gmail.com<mailto:allisonjonjak@gmail.com> allisonjonjak.com<http://allisonjonjak.com> _______________________________________________ List Name: Callers mailing list List Address: Callers(a)lists.sharedweight.net<mailto:Callers@lists.sharedweight.net> Archives: https://www.mail-archive.com/callers@lists.sharedweight.net/

5 years, 11 months

Re: [Callers] "Second" ONS

by jim saxe

Allison, Thanks for your answers. They were exactly on target at addressing the spirit of my questions and were quite informative. Thanks for clarifying that the issue about Mad Scatter was anxiety about not finding new partners, and not about anyone being fixated on some idea like "I want to do the last [set] dance with my favorite partner, darn it!" I presume the lost and (not?) found issue was largely a result of people making large "blobs". Not only is it more likely for people in a big blob not to naturally pair up, but it's even possible that someone looking for a partner could more readily grab another leftover person from an adjacent group than find the one on the far side of their own group. Then the remaining non-partnered people could be quite far apart. One of them might even give up and sit down. Etc. And how could you have even guessed that it might be useful to teach strategies for coping with the situation if you didn't anticipate the big blobs in the first place? Best of luck with your next dance. --Jim

5 years, 11 months

Re: [Callers] "Second" ONS

by Allison Jonjak

Thanks Alan, Rich, Mac, and Jim! >> and have a couple slightly more challenging ones - with progression, etc - up your sleeve but without any emotional investment in actually using them. "without emotional investment in using them" is very well-put, and I think it describes my philosophy overall for this dance "series" >Definitely agree on the "without any emotional investment" part. Long-term, do you have an ambition for these events to evolve into "contra" dances, or would you be happy as a clam to keep having events where facility at ending a swing side-by-side with the _____ on the left and the _____ on the right is not an important skill, so long as you have a room full of smiling dancers? I haven't emotionally invested in an outcome :) I don't live there, so I can realistically only hold dances when I visit my parents. I think I'd *feel glad *if I was able to help sow seeds of an eventual dance community. But since I'm not present to spearhead growth, it seems like the best seed I can sow is "have a room full of smiling dancers every once in a while." Give people good memories of connecting with family and friends through music and dance. > I have a few comments and questions about your notes: > The notes say "beginner's lesson (circle, Lark Raven, ...)" but the dance descriptions use "ladles" and "gentlespoons". What terms did you actually use? If you used "Larks" and "Ravens", did you say anything at all about their relation to traditional gender roles? In practice how much correlation was there between what people looked like and which role they danced in? That's a website feature---if you're logged in, you can choose a dialect to print your program. So you (not logged in) saw gentlespoons, while I logged in to print that program saw Larks & Ravens. When I print a program for Childgrove open calling I print the roles as ladies & gents. https://contradb.com/dialect I picked Larks and Ravens for this dance, and introduced them like this: "ask someone to dance, take their hand, and line up facing the band. Somebody's on the left, lefts are Larks, raise your left hand. The other person's on the right, rights are Ravens, raise your right hand. You can be a lark one dance and a raven the next dance, the roles only matter so you know when I'm talking to you." As you notice only 2 dances really "had" roles, but this worked fine, nobody seemed confused, and everybody danced with each other. The 'I can dance with anyone" persisted from the beginners' lesson through the rest of the dance too (you don't name them lark & raven or lady & gent to do Virginia Reel, but you still find a partner. Men and women partnered, women and women partnered, men and men partnered---which seems like the ideal outcome for a twice-a-year dance? Who knows what ratio of people will come in the door---my hope is to have people only have to sit out when they choose to sit out.) >Leaving aside the waltz and the polka, it looks like the only two dances where the roles of Lark/Gentlespoon vs. Raven/Ladle were significant were the roll away dance and Mad Scatter. I didn't say anything but 'find a partner for a waltz / polka' for the couples dances. People did pair off more-or-less by gender for those; a fair number of attendees were married couples. >Notes on the roll away dance say "succeeded at walkthrough, weren't going to make it through the dance." If you could tell, did the confusion seem to have to do with figuring out who was in what role, or was it mostly about something else, such as getting from the star to the lines of four? I think that the difficulty was that there were TWO roles to remember: a person was a head OR a side, AND a raven OR a lark. That was too much intricacy for people who don't know at least one of the roles on autopilot. Lesson learned. >[Two side comments on that dance: (1) Notes say "This variation is Wade Pearson's, removing the right-left-through. ...", but the "original" version you link to doesn't have a right and left through. It has a cross trail. (2) Personally, I don't think it would be a great loss to drop this dance from the repertoire, regardless of the role terminology or the manner of setting up the lines of four. I could say more on both points but don't want to go even further off topic.] Agreed, I really wanted something with a rollaway since it's my favorite move for "teaching giving weight," but it seems to require intricate choreography to get people back to place. I hoped the square would do it, but I overshot the audience. They were gracious when I had us switch, at least :) >The other dance description that mentions the roles is Mad Scatter. How did that work out in practice? I note that it doesn't really matter which member of each pair goes into the center for an allemande or star and which one orbits, provided nobody minds who they get for new partner. But I'm curious about what actually happened. >Notes on Mad Scatter say "Avoid a mixer last even though they voted for it." Do you have reason to believe that people were disappointed about that? I certainly know of many dance series where people would bristle at having a mixer as the "last" dance of the evening (even if followed by a waltz as the really last dance), but I'm wondering whether you actually sensed such bristling at your event. Note also Rich's comment on ending a barn dance with a circle mixer. This dance itself went smoothly, people retained their roles and knew what to do. People sort of made larger and larger 'blobs' by the end of the tune. I thought I sensed something like stress, though---in a scatter mixer, it seemed like there were moments of "oh we're left out, there's no new partner for us" and so sometimes people would have a disappointed/stressed look on their face while looking for the 'lost and found'. I had a broad age range, and it seemed like people who had lower mobility were more-often the left-out, stressed ones. Since those were the first non-smiles I saw all evening, I'd rather avoid it next time, especially as the closing dance. I think a circle mixer would be a great closer for this type of dance though, since you will meet everyone to bid farewell, while always having a 'next partner' close-at-hand. Thanks for asking! I hope I've answered the spirit of all your questions---if I've missed anything let me know, Allison -- Allison Jonjak, M.S., E.I.T. allisonjonjak(a)gmail.com allisonjonjak.com

5 years, 11 months

[Callers] "Second" ONS

by Allison Jonjak

Hi all, I hail from a rural area with no nearby dance communities. This June I held a free community barn dance, featuring lots of Linda Leslie's "very easy dances". Through the magic of newspapers I was able to connect with a string band, and we had about 25 dancers, lots of whom left their email addresses 'so you can invite us again next time.' I'll head home for the holidays, the band is willing and the hall is willing, so I'm planning to host another dance. The question is: should I prepare -the same dances -the same easiness-level of dances, but different actual dances -a dance or two that uses progressions? The dancers in June learned very quickly, and aced the proto-progressions in both Jefferson & Liberty, and Peak Bagger. How much of that practice in June do I expect to carry forward to November? Here was the program I wound up calling, https://contradb.com/programs/76 , pardon that the calling notes are mixed in with my followup notes. Here were the dances I had prepared: https://contradb.com/programs/71 Thanks all in advance for your help! -- Allison Jonjak, M.S., E.I.T. allisonjonjak(a)gmail.com allisonjonjak.com

5 years, 11 months

Re: [Callers] Oval Petronella critique

by Bill Baritompa

Hi John and Austin, Thanks for your feedback and references. I tried the SP version last Thursday with 12 dancers at our house. It went over well and Line balance R/L worked fine. If I had an odd number of couples I would have done the DP version which I like better. Cheers, Bill

5 years, 11 months

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Import1 October 2018