At our dance on Saturday night, I had half a dozen people there at the start of the evening who'd never done this kind of dancing before. As part of a very short beginners' session, I had people lined up across from a partner, and improvised this sequence:
Circle left; Circle right Right-hand star; LH star Long lines forward and back; all do-si-do partner Down the center four in line (ones in the middle), back up still holding hands in line, ones arch, pull twos through In essence, it's Jefferson's Reel without that dance's B1 (actives only down the outside and back), and it worked fine. One nice thing about the dance-- a feature it shares with Family Contra-- is that dancers are connected with others for virtually all of the dance so there's less opportunity to go astray. > I have several set dances and a few Sicilian circles for such folks, and I normally do them first so that dancers can get the idea of progressing to new neighbors, before we try contras. Alternately, you could do one of those set dances, one of these simple contras, go back to another longways or Sicilian circle, then to a simple scatter mixer for variety (Ted's Solo Mixer or Set a Crochet come to mind), and then another simple contra. David Millstone
