Dear Alan,
When calling Sicilian Circles, I have dancers form a large circle. I
then actually go out on the floor and ask two couples to face each
other. I then progress around the ring, having the couples face as I
go. It actually takes very little time to do and avoids confusion
surrounding language choices.
Linda
On Sep 8, 2010, at 6:03 PM, Alan Winston - SSRL Central Computing wrote:
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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