Jeff wrote:
> Yesterday I called Haste to the Wedding [1] after an influx of new
> dancers and as a recovery from a dance that was a little too hard for
> the group. I expected it to go well, but I was surprised by how well,
> actually. With the clapping in time with the music in the B parts and
> the extra time for the pass through, a lot of people who'd been
> confused by progression and how this whole thing worked seemed to get
> it in a way that helped for following dances as well.
> Does anyone have suggestions for other dances that work similarly,
> teaching progression?
I'll echo others who talk about how great a dance Haste to the Wedding is.
I use it early on in one-night-stand programs very often, usually as a Sicilian
Circle. According to John Millar in "Country Dances of Colonial America", the
tune was used in an operetta called "The Elopement" in the 1760s. Very similar
dance figures to the version we use can be found in the 1770s, although with a
two-hand-turn-halfway-and-turn-individually-to-face-new-neighbors progression,
which Does Not Work for beginners; The Sicilian circle with pass-through
progression seems to be mid/late 19th-century. Anyway, it's undifferentiated
enough that it can be your first contra dance, your first English dance, your
first Regency dance, your first Civil War dance.
In similar circumstances, if the band knows the tune (and they usually do,
especially if they're old-timey) I'll pull out "Soldier's Joy", which I have
from a mid-Victorian dance manual:
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
SOLDIER'S JOY. 80 Steps.
Sicilian Circle ("As for Spanish Dance")
32-bar reel.
A1: 1-4: Forward and back
5-8: Opposites turn two hands (no progression)
A2: 1-4: Partners balance
5-8: Partners turn (could swing if wanted)
B1: 1-8: Ladies chain over and back
B2: 1-8: Forward and back, forward and pass through.
Original text:
All forward and back, swing the opposite-all balance to partners and
turn-ladies chain-forward and back, forward and cross to face the next couple.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
(You could certainly do this as an improper longways, but you'd need to space
the minor sets out further than we usually do for contra, since the ladies
chain is along the set rather than across it.)
It's sometimes challenging to get first-timer groups into sicilian circle
formation, since words that work for people with a vague clue ("couple facing
couple around a circle", "radiate out like spokes of a wheel from the hub",
etc) often don't for people who don't have practice in seeing the big picture.
If anybody has ideas about that making that go smoothly all the time, I'd be
happy to hear them. But in any case, the formation is great for getting the
progression idea across since it relieves the first-timer of having to deal
with end effects, role changes, etc, etc.
-- Alan
--
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Alan Winston --- [email protected]
Disclaimer: I speak only for myself, not SLAC or SSRL Phone: 650/926-3056
Paper mail to: SSRL -- SLAC BIN 99, 2575 Sand Hill Rd, Menlo Park CA 94025
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