The vast majority of roll aways in contra dance include the half sashay.

Looking at my database, only 1.9% of the contras with rollaway have one person staying in place. (By way of comparison, 2,2% of the contras with petronella turns have people going to the left, rather than the right.)

This may be because of habit, or because it's easier for the center of rotation to be between two dancers, rather than one one person.

I'd still assume "roll away" to include an unstated "half sashay". If you've got a dance that has one person staying put while the other rolls in front of them, I'd recommend being very careful to indicate that in the walkthough/written dance instructions.

-Chris Page

San Diego, CA

On Sat, Aug 22, 2015 at 9:30 AM, Don Veino via Callers <callers@lists.sharedweight.net> wrote:

I have to respectively disagree here.

In my experience, a "roll away" (RA) call has been conflated with a "roll away with a half sashay" (RAHS) for many dancers (and callers) - but the moves are distinct and can have choreographic significance. What I think has happened is that callers are using abbreviated calls of something like "roll" for the RAHS situation (which is more common) and that has colored the interpretation.

In my understanding, the two calls are like this (the "|" symbol denoting the boundary between adjacent hands-four):

"Gents Roll (Away) the Ladies" (Ladies only change position):

Starting position G0 L1|G1 L2|G2 L3
Ending position G0 L2|G1 L3|G2 L4

"Gents Roll (Away) the Ladies with a Half Sashay" (Ladies and Gents swap position):

Starting position G0 L1|G1 L2|G2 L3
Ending position L1 G0|L2 G1|L3 G2

Of course, this can be also done in other configurations like circles and boxes.

I ran into this a short while ago while calling a new (to me) dance and having the walk-through fail. I knew the dance was right and my instruction was correct. Rather than try to figure it out on the fly I bailed to a fall-back dance. As I video most of my gigs, I was able to go back to that and see what happened.

In this instance the difference between the calls was very significant. I called a RA but the dancers (mostly) did a RAHS. This was in a box configuration, meaning the dancer pairing became opposite to what was intended. The next time I call this dance I will be sure to say "Roll Away BUT NO Half Sashay, Gents stay put".

-Don