Re: [ppalum] Community and One Nighter dances: Book and CDSS article

When I think of “Community Dance” I think in terms of dancing on one community...one village...one town, not the “Greater community of dance” that follows around. Community Dance Gypsies? I don’t think such a creature exists. Canterbury, NH, where we live (small town, only here four days a week) is an upwardly mobile community with too many blacktop driveways, population under 2000...a good mix of professional folks, lawyers, etc, farmers, loggers craftspeople and characters like me. What dancing occurs here is because of us. We have a morris side. Everyone on the Canterbury Morris Side is from Canterbury. The morris musicians are all from Canterbury. We have a band...The Riders of Canterbury, 17 of us, who only appear on New Years Day for The Ride, where we descend, announced, on various homes during the day, creating havoc and revelry. Then we dance on Maple Sunday in a local sugar house, then at Shaker Village for the Heifer Parade, 4th of July Parade (morris), Canterbury Fair (morris) (at these morris events we always get the crowd up to dance the Winster Galop). Sometimes have a dance or two in our home. We do pretty much the same dances, yet there is always someone who remarks that the dance were different from what we did last year.??? We have thought of trying to put on a Community Dance series here in town, say 2 or 3 times a year. We have not been able to give it a go...wonder if it would fly, given all that we do have. There used to be a monthly dance in Canterbury. The town had burned to the ground in April of 1943, and to raise money to rebuild the church, Grange Hall, store and a few dwellings, they ran dances. In a Baptist oriented community, that was a job, but they did it. Band was called the Bucket Brigade...banjo, piano, drums and clarinet. No caller. Dances were Portland Fancy, Virginia Reel, Paul Jones, and Grand March. Lots of polkas and foxtrots. Same dances month after month. Some folks came from bordering towns, but mostly townies. Ran them for fifteen years. Built a new fire station and church, store and parish house. Another local dance we do is in neighboring Sanbornton in a heated barn. (You’ve been there, Paul and Pat). We hold forth there about three times a year. It is a semi-public gig, folks coming from the bordering towns...Franklin, Tilton, New Hampton, some even down from Plymouth. A slightly bigger community, mostly peace activists and back to the landers. I do the same dances depending on the season and nobody asks for new or different or exciting dances. I have not found that folks who dance at these events get bored. The musicians don’t get bored...if anything, they have solved that issue by doing medleys. I am afraid it is the callers who get bored. There are no community dance type events happening in any of the towns surrounding Canterbury or even beyond (excepting Sanbornton), and so far as I know, there are not even any dancers living in these towns except Concord. Concord, the state capital, has a monthly contra dance in East Concord, usually well attended, and drawing from the greater contra dance community...folks travel a distance to support this dance. I have a hard time imagining that these same people, or folks like them, traveling a distance to support a “community” dance (They might if it were the only show in town, but it isn’t.) What we need is/are a community of Community Dancers, and hopefully that community would be from one town or group of small towns...like up in Belfast. That dance in Cornwall, Ct. is a good example of a community dance. I guess some of the time it is billed as a contra dance, but when I have been there it is pretty much a community barn dance. Down there a few weeks ago, and didn’t do any contras as such...only whole sets, circle dances, one set of squares (Bob Livingston did one) Pat Campbell did a longways and Rachael did a circle square) Great little dance, probably 30 dancers, mostly local I would say. Maybe what we have going are micro-communities like peace activists, gardners, church groups, contra dancers, folk dancers (mostly urban, not rural) alternate life styles, hiking, slightly larger, but not much, than just from one town. So, our job is to become itinerant Community Dancing Masters, and part of our job besides calling the dances, will be to find and set up the community itself. cheers, Dudley Dudley & Jacqueline Laufman PO Box 61, 322 Shaker Rd Canterbury, NH 03224 www.laufman.org 603-783-4719 jdlaufman(a)comcast.net Education book & CD at www.humankinetics.com Performance Calendar at www.laufman.org From: Paul Rosenberg Sent: Sunday, March 13, 2016 12:42 PM To: Pourparler PPalum Cc: trad-dance-callers(a)yahoogroups.com Subject: [ppalum] Community and One Nighter dances: Book and CDSS article All of this discussion on these two lists reminds me of my two long time goals: 1. For a few years, I have thought about writing an article for CDSS News about the value of community dancing (for lack of a better term, I refer to community dancing as an evening of longways, circles, squares, and other dances that can be done by anyone with no experience dancing at all, the very first time they try it. No lessons, workshop, etc). However, this is such a daunting task, and I keep running into day-to-day tasks that prevent me from sitting down more than once every 3 months or so…..But I truly believe that CDSS would be a great organization to promote community dancing, as part of their mission! There are a few of you who said you are willing to help to write this article. How can we get this project underway? Maybe an in-person meeting among a few of us? 2. My very long term goal is to get a collection of a few hundred great dances for community dance series as well as one nighters. If I can get someone to help me collect them and put them into a book-like format, I would be willing to fund the start-up of this collection. Hopefully, CDSS will be interested in funding the publication of this book too! OK, back to my day-to-day projects…….. Paul Rosenberg Albany, NY www.homespun.biz 518-482-9255 On Mar 7, 2016, at 5:14 PM, jdlaufman(a)comcast.net wrote: The question of “contras” being called at ONSs has been raised before, and fairly recently, and several of us chimed in quickly with “WHY?” If the gig is a one nighter, and 95% of the folks there have not been exposed to contras before, then no matter what you choose for a dance, it will have to be taught and walked through, which, even if done well, can throw a damper on that kind of a party. So, why? There are so many other good dances, whole set, sets, circles. We played for a rowdy barn dance near here once for another caller. After a few fairly successful whole sets and circles he said “Oh, we haven’t done a duple contra yet.” and proceeded to spend the next half hour trying, unsuccessfully, to do A-Roving. Train wreck and end of evening. What happens is that the musicians are having a great time playing the chunes and the dancers appreciate that, and the dancers are having a great foot stomping time, but the poor caller is sometimes not getting much attention and so cooks up a figger too complex so that the dancers have to work too hard to get it which they might not, so they don’t feel successful..... But if you must do a “contra” at an ONS Jefferson & Liberty is the one. Even ONSers like to swing, so I sometimes leave out the star, just call it A1 circle left & right,/ A2 down the outside and back/ B1 Down the center 4 in line, inside arch, outside under/ B2 All swing partners.. Or, do it with the stars, and do the swing at the end, adding an extra 8 bars of music, making it a 40 bar dance. You can look around for a 40 bar chune, or just roar into it and have it come out right occasionally. Dudley Dudley & Jacqueline Laufman PO Box 61, 322 Shaker Rd Canterbury, NH 03224 www.laufman.org 603-783-4719 jdlaufman(a)comcast.net Education book & CD at www.humankinetics.com Performance Calendar at www.laufman.org From: mailto:trad-dance-callers@yahoogroups.com Sent: Saturday, March 05, 2016 1:44 PM To: trad-dance-callers(a)yahoogroups.com ; Caller's discussion list Subject: [trad-dance-callers] Contras for One Nighters I rarely call a contra at a One Night Party Dance, but occasionally I am asked to. I have a few in my cards, but can anyone make some sure fire recommendations. Assume 95%-100% non dancers. Thanks, Rich Stafford, CT -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "PPalum" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to ppalum+unsubscribe(a)googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to ppalum(a)googlegroups.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.