I believe shadow swings should be limited to dance weekends or workshops, and even then only rarely. While keeping in mind Cary Ravitz's rationale that you don't choose your shadow, your chances of having a very pleasant interaction with a shadow are very much higher at a dance weekend. Of course, not all weekends are made the same.
As a dancer I sometimes replace certain interactions (such as shadow allemande right once and a half) with a shadow swing when it's someone I enjoy swinging with. If my shadow is a beginner or a so-so swinger, I dance the figure as called. And I like Mark Galipeau's suggestion that the caller can change shadow interaction to a swing on the last iteration of the dance, but only if that would not confuse the dancers. --Jerome On Jan 24, 2008 11:00 AM, <[email protected]> wrote: > > Date: Wed, 23 Jan 2008 16:25:25 -0500 > From: J L Korr <[email protected]> > Subject: [Callers] Shadow swings > > During the same open mike session, I enjoyed dancing Nils Fredland's "Head > of the Bed" to Dave Eisenstatter's calling, and it got me thinking. I've > called dances with shadow swings infrequently, because in the back of my > head I think about the following excerpt from Cary Ravitz's notes on contra > choreography: "Watch out for excessive trail buddy interaction. People don't > choose their trail buddy and they are stuck with them for the entire dance. > . . . Trail buddy swings are not allowed." > > However, Cary also emphasizes that those are his personal preferences, and > others' preferences may vary. So I'd appreciate others' thoughts on this -- > are shadow swings as strongly negative an issue for you as they are for > Cary? Clearly they were not an issue for Nils when writing "Head of the Bed" > or Seth T. when writing "Meg's a Dancing Fool," for instance. > > Thanks, > Jeremy > > -- Jerome Grisanti 660-528-0858 660-528-0714 http://www.jeromegrisanti.com
