Hi Seth,

1)           Larry Jennings has a whole section on this in Give-and-Take.  Page 42: Effective Lingo.

              He suggests that you don’t need any fancy names.  Just use “Twirl to Swap”.  As you do the walk-through you tell the dancers:

Initial facing

Final facing

Which hands are joined

              You are quite right that Star Thru and California Twirl use the same hands (though Larry appears to have Star Thru wrong in his table!). The different is the initial facing, so one is a 90 degree turn, the other is 180 degrees.

              I have heard the opposite-hand California Twirl called a Nevada Twirl in California - I don’t think they know where Jersey is!  Larry calls it a Courtesy Twirl.

              I agree with Lisa that we should try to use existing terminology correctly in order to avoid confusion.

And I wish that callers would use more of the useful terms.  For example, many dancers must be confused by the words “Pass the Ocean”.  They must wonder what that has to do with getting into a Short Wavy Line.  If the callers called it an Ocean Wave, and explained that the call was short for “Pass Through to an Ocean Wave” I suspect it would be a lot easier to teach!

And Tidal Wave sounds so much better than Long Wavy Line.  Or maybe that’s just me! :-)

2)           Part of the difference is what move you did before the Circle Left 3/4 and what comes after it.  Circle Left 3/4 is 6 beats/steps.  If it is sandwiched between two swings* then the dancers will be very happy to finish on the diagonal, get straight into the swing, and have two extra beats for the second swing.  But if you have different moves before and after then you may want the circle to take the full 8 beats.  If you want a circle-based move next then you might want to slide left first to absorb some of the time and finish the circle at the right time to start the next move.  If you want to fall back into lines after the circle then you might want to go straight into the circle on the diagonal so there is time to fall back at the end of the circle.

              Whether the difference will actually affect the timing and flow once the dancers get into the groove is another matter entirely.

* The sequence <Swing; Circle Left 3/4; Swing> takes up (nearly) half a dance without doing anything interesting.  I believe that it is far too over-used.  Choreographers, please be more creative! :-)

           Happy dancing,                          

                   John                                  

John Sweeney, Dancer, England   john@modernjive.com 01233 625 362 & 07802 940 574                         

http://contrafusion.co.uk/KentCeilidhs.html for Live Music Ceilidhs                       

http://www.contrafusion.co.uk for Dancing in Kent

http://www.modernjive.com for Modern Jive DVDs

From: Callers <callers-bounces@lists.sharedweight.net> On Behalf Of Tepfer, Seth via Callers
Sent: 21 March 2019 16:57
To: callers <callers@lists.sharedweight.net>
Subject: [Callers] Opposite StarThru and functional difference in LD v Slide

Two questions:

1) We have box the gnat (right hand to right hand), swat the flea (left hand to left hand), and star thru (Lark/Gent right hand to Lady/Raven left hand). What is the name of the opposite of a star thru (Lark/Gent left hand to Lady/Raven right hand)?

2) What is the functional difference between slide left circle left 3/4 and on the left diagonal circle left 3/4?

Thanks

Seth