I recently prepped Ted's Triplet #24 for a dance that I knew would be tiny, at least at the beginning (Tulsa, OK). I chose it because after going through all of Ted's Triplets in Zesty Contras, it was one of the only ones (the only one?) that I felt confident the dancers would be able to handle. These are very experienced contra dancers who rarely leave their community dance, at which, I'm fairly certain, triplets are rarely if ever called. (There was no wild cheering.) We did a walkthrough for every couple, by which time I had figured out what was particularly confusing and they had figured out how to help each other.
What confused them: casting without hands to an inverted line; left diagonals with so few people; and ending in 3-1-2 order. If I were going to teach this again, I'd probably try a demonstration of the A1 casting straight off the bat -- I let them try it and it was a pretty messy experience. I expect that most of our problem was that everyone in OK automatically does a butterfly-whirl style cast around (whereas I learned a hands-free cast in contra and ECD both). The idea that they had to make room for the 1s as they cast to middle place also baffled people briefly, but that was easily resolved. Left diagonals took experience and cooperation -- by the time we'd walked it twice, the third time was dancer-assisted and worked fine. The ending order just required emphatic reassurance that it wasn't wrong! As an English dancer/caller myself, I was struck by how much more "Englishy" Ted's Triplets are than the contras in the same book (which are what I think of as old-fashioned, and therefore a bit Englishy, already). They seem to exploit interesting and unfamiliar choreographic possibilities that result from the form, and so even when the figures are familiar, they can throw off experienced contra dancers. I travel a fair amount to dance -- in the SF Bay area and a bit in the LA area, throughout the midwest, and up and down the East Coast -- and I rarely encounter triplets at community dances (I feel fairly confident saying "never," actually). They do appear at weekends in my experience, although I can't remember the last time one was called at a weekend I attended -- probably Ann Arbor, MI's Dawn Dance several years ago? Louise. On Aug 20, 2012, at 2:34 PM, Kalia Kliban wrote: > Hi all > > I just encountered a triplet in the wild for the first time (they don't get > called much around here, and I've been out of the dancing loop for a bit) at > our Santa Rosa (CA) contra last Friday. It was Ted's Triplet #24. > Apparently wild cheering is traditional when one of Ted Triplets is announced? > > As an English dancer, I found it to be a pretty simple and straightforward > dance and a nice break from loads o' longways, but the contra dancers all > around me were falling to bits, apparently completely flummoxed by the small > sets. > > How often do triplets show up in programs where you dance? How often, and in > what sorts of settings, do you call them? What do you do differently to > teach them, to help contra dancers with the unusual formation? They seem > like useful dances, both for a change of pace and for those dreaded dinky > crowds, but as I mentioned, this was my first time encountering one in years > of dancing. Are they more common on the East Coast? > > Kalia > _______________________________________________ > Callers mailing list > [email protected] > http://www.sharedweight.net/mailman/listinfo/callers
