Chrissy Fowler wrote: >> Seems most people most of the time balance the ring toward the center and >> back. Was it formerly more of a balance right then left?
Colin Hume wrote: > In the original (Scottish) dance it was a "set" rather than a "balance", and > that would be to the right and left. Current SCD styling has setting being pretty much on the spot (even for balance-in-line), though I'm not sure how much that is a C20th invention of Miss Milligan's. Both the Petronella turn and the set are done with the setting step. The contra style balance-the-ring-and-Petronella occurs a couple of SCDs e.g. Back to the Fireside. Beth Parkes wrote: > One of the contra dance traditions has been a small set of named moves and, > for the most part, directional names for any new moves. So, for example, we > say, "Pass through to an ocean wave," instead of "Pass the ocean." Please, > please fight any tendency to give obscure names for moves. If it is not > descriptive, it is not appropriate. Named figures are a shorthand that lets the caller concisely call a figure that they've already described. Unless you're going to call every movement every time, there's no particular harm in using a name that's not descriptive, as long as it's been explained. Pass the Ocean is actually a good example of this, as describing the movements would be more like "pass through, ladies catching LH and turning a quarter, men taking partner's RH at the far end of the line", though I'd avoid putting too many such figures on a programme unless I knew the dancers were familiar with them. Contra already includes many jargon terms it would be impractical to do without - gypsy, balance, cast &c. Petronella is far from obscure, and is the word I would use to call the movement once I'd walked it through. But I come from an SCD background where we have many more long figures that have extremely non-descriptive names (Espagnole, Tourbillon, Schiehallion Reel &c.). and: > And I was doing the two's variation in Petronella which uses a left turn back > in the early 80s. Can you describe this in more detail? If you spin to the left, don't you crash into the 1s spinning to the right? Edmund Croft, Cambridge, UK
