Hello everyone,
It's been a while since I've written one of these, and a lot has
happened in my calling career since the last one. I had my debut at the
Scout House in January, calling for the 2nd Saturday dance. I've called
for the Monday night dance there as well. I've been booked to call
another Monday night dance and this time the band is Notorious! The Mill
City dance has been on hiatus for various reasons (hall unavailable,
storms, festivals) and will return in May for our 1 year anniversary!
Lots of wonderful opportunities.
But this report is about my session at the Down East Country Dance
Festival a couple of weeks ago in Maine. If you haven't been, this is
one of my favorite festivals. So many wonderful sessions, great people
and a strong community. I call up there semi-regularly now and it's
great each time to visit with my Maine friends.
My session was titled "Neighborly Contras". I had no idea what I was
going to do with it when I applied, but worked it out over a few weeks
after I found out that my application had been accepted. What I decided
was that I was going to push the boundaries of modern urban contra
dancing by breaking a few of the rules. For example, I planned on
calling dances without partner swings, unequal movement (1s are more
active than the 2s) and mixers. The last one turned out to be the most
problematic. David Millstone sent me a contra mixer that I liked very
much, but didn't quite meet the vision that I had for the session. In
the end, I decided to write my own. The weekend before, I tried it out
on some willing test subjects at a dance called by Lisa Sieverts and
discovered that the gents progressed and the ladies stayed in the same
spot each time through. After some re-work that week, I was ready for
the session. The new dance is copied down below.
The session was at 11am on Saturday. I arrived a little after 10am,
hoping to attend Chrissy Fowler's caller's workshop, but ran into the
band in the hallway. I had worked with Calliope a couple of times before
on visits to Maine, so it was nice to be familiar with them. They were
putting together tune sets, so we were able to plan out the session, get
the feel for each dance set and pick the tunes ahead of time. This made
things very easy on stage. We started late, so to fit in 4 dances turned
out to be very tight. Having the tunes picked let me focus on keeping
the walkthroughs short and the dancers dancing.
To be fair to the dancers, I provided a disclaimer at the beginning of
the session warning them that they wouldn't see their partners too much.
I even jokingly mentioned that the waltz session was across the hall if
they wanted to make goo-goo eyes at their partner. 8^)
Here are the dances that I called:
Essex Reel
duple improper
Tony Parkes
A1: neighbor do-si-do, neighbor swing
A2: 4 in line down the hall, turn as couples and come back
B1: Circle Left, Circle Right
B2: Right Hand Star, Left Hand Star
I had a choice between this dance and another with unequal choreography,
but this one fit better with the session as a whole.
No use crying over...
becket mixer
Chris Weiler
A1: Partner balance and swing
A2: Circle Left 3/4, pass thru, neighbor #2 swing
B1: Long Lines (notice 3rd neighbor next to you)
Neighbor #3 allemande left 1+1/2
B2: Ladies Chain
Left hand star, turn away from your star and face your next partner
I had some great positive feedback from a few people after the session.
People did want me to call it all the way through. One person pointed
out to me that there are no anchors in this dance, no partner to turn
to, no shadow, nothing consistent. Another person figured out that if
you mess it up, you can grab just about anyone and start over. It taxed
their brains a bit, but it was early in the festival and people were up
for the challenge.
I had asked Calliope to play easy, happy reels for the first two dances
to keep people's spirits up while doing unfamiliar choreography.
Calliope loves to play jigs, so the next one they set to a nice bouncy
set. I also took pity on the dancers and called some more conventional
dances to finish the session.
Black Bird in the Night
duple improper, waves (neighbor right, ladies, left)
Don Flaherty
A1: balance wave, rory-o-more slide right
balance wave, rory-o-more slide left
A2 neighbor balance and swing
B1: Ladies do-si-do 1+1/2
partner swing
B2: long lines, circle left 3/4, pass thru to new waves
The last dance, I asked for driving reels and Calliope picked some great
rip-roaring ones!
Sleepless at Pinewoods
duple improper
Bob Isaacs
A1: Neighbor #1, pull by right, #2 pull by left, #3 pull by right #4
allemande left once
#3 pull by right, #2 pull by left
A2: Neighbor #1 balance and swing
B1: Circle left 3/4, partner swing
B2: Ladies chain, left hand star
I had a lot of fun calling the session and working with Calliope. It
felt great to have almost everything that I wanted to do succeed so
well. I look forward to calling at more festivals in the future!
I'd love to hear how other people are doing (especially the people who
are newer to calling)!
Happy calling and dancing!!
Chris Weiler
Goffstown, NH
