I tend to agree with Rich - I just say balance and spin to the right and sometimes don't even use the term Petronella. I think that it's a little more descriptive than to say "Petronella turn" - although by way of the folk process that's what it's come to be known as. And plus in the patter of the call, it's easier and more rhythmic to say "balance, spin to the right" or something like that. Did you know that in the original Petronella chestnut dance, instead of balance and spin, it's spin and balance?
Perry ________________________________ From: Alan Winston <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Sent: Friday, November 23, 2012 4:49 PM Subject: Re: [Callers] How to call a Petronella Turn? I feel kind of stuck in perpetuating the use of the term "Petronella". I'll use it in the walkthrough because that orients the experienced dancers immediately and than call "spin" or "twirl" and probably keep calling "make a ring and balance now" longer than than I call the twirl.) I think it's courteous to the newer dancers to identify how the figure is commonly called so they'll have a chance of knowing it the next time somebody else calls it, but it certainly is just about the most undescriptive name possible. Scottish dancing also has a "Petronella turn" - not surprisingly, since the chestnut contra seems to derive from something published in Edinburgh by Gow in, uh, 1820 or something - but it is different in detail from the contra one. (And in the Scottish dance, the actives only do the Petronella move first, then balance (pas-de-basque) in place.) Dudley Laufman wrote some time back that the chestnut contra had the same thing as the Scottish - just the actives traveling - until somebody imported the all-in-and-out all-travel-twirling from an English trad dance called Roxburgh Castle (which uses a rant step, incidentally). So the whole BTR-Petronella-turn thing is completely a 20th-century invention in contra dancing. [Not that this is directly responsive to the original question; I just think it's interesting.] -- Alan On 11/23/2012 1:30 PM, Rich Goss wrote: > I never use the term Petronella for that move. It's always "spin to the > right" or twirl to the right" For me. Petronella is the name of a Chestnut > that the move comes from as most all of you know. Callers used to say "as > in the dance Peronella..." but through the evolutionary process is no longer > mentioned. The move has taken on the name of the dance. That said, if's my > personal preference not to use that name for the move. It does bug me a > little when other callers use it as the name for the move, but not enough to > say anything or lose any sleep over it. > > Rich > >> On Fri, Nov 23, 2012 at 3:10 PM, Maia McCormick <[email protected]> wrote: >> >>> So I had my first introduction to contradance through my school, taught by >>> student callers who had been taught by student callers before them, etc. I >>> was first taught to call a Petronella as... a Petronella. And then as I >>> started going to more outside dances and started reading up on the practice >>> of calling, I heard the move more and more just called as "balance the ring >>> and spin to the right" or "balance the ring and spin to swap." >>> >>> So, esteemed caller-folk, I ask you: how do* you* call a Petronella Turn? >>> By name, or with some other turn of phrase? Do you have any sense how >>> widespread either of these conventions are? Why not just call a Petronella >>> a Petronella? If you call it by description rather than by name, do you >>> generally put the entire call together (e.g. "BALance the RING and SPIN to >>> the RIGHT") or break it up ("BALance the RING... and SPIN to the RIGHT" so >>> that "spin to the right" ends up coming on beats 3 & 4, just before the >>> actual spinning occurs)? Any thoughts are welcome! >>> >>> Cheers, >>> Maia >>> _______________________________________________ >>> Callers mailing list >>> [email protected] >>> http://www.sharedweight.net/mailman/listinfo/callers > _______________________________________________ > Callers mailing list > [email protected] > http://www.sharedweight.net/mailman/listinfo/callers _______________________________________________ Callers mailing list [email protected] http://www.sharedweight.net/mailman/listinfo/callers
