Hi all. Several times a year I go through my cards and try to throw out dances
that turned out not to be as great as I thought they were when I collected
them. This round, several transitions are sticking out for me as being
awkward. The first is a ladies chain to a circle L with the same group of 4.
The courtesy turn ends with both dancers' momentum going more toward a circle R
than circle L. I find this transition even worse when the ladies chain is on
the L diagonal followed by a circle L with the couple across. On a R&L through
followed by a circle L, I recommend that the dancers use a California twirl
instead of a courtesy turn and that gets around that courtesy turn to circle L
transition. Am I being a bit too anal about this? There are just so many
dances available, I feel like I need to get down to this level of detail to
weed some out.
The second transition that I see a lot, especially in Cary Ravitz dances is
swing to star (L or R) in same group of 4. For this one, one of the swingee's
needed hand will be around their swinging partner and it's awkward to extricate
it to make the star. In some dances, depending on what follows the star, I can
replace the star with a Long Lines F&B which fixes it.
I talked to several of you at NEFFA about another transition that really bugs
me: from a hey which has a R shoulder pass in the middle to a swing on the
side. Whoever finishes the hey first, has to make an immediate change in
momentum (since they just passed L on the side) to get into a swing. Some
dances alleviate the problem by using a balance and swing instead of just a
swing, but that only works if there's enough time.
Any thoughts? Like I said, I'm getting way down to the details to come up
with reasons to weed out dances. Do you have suggestions for making these
transitions smoother? Are there other transitions you personally try to avoid?
Thanks,
Lynn
