On Sat, 27 Apr 2013 15:25:37 -0700, Alan Winston wrote: > My sense from reading your notes is that Zesty Playford is what I'd > think of (as an American who has danced English in the SF Bay Area, > Boston, etc) as good English dancing with extra playfulness.
I'm not sure that some Americans would class it as "good", since it isn't the way they've been taught to dance English. > Questions: Is "Playford" the Brit usage where you mean what US > means by "English" dancing? (Since the linked video is of Jenny > Pluck Pears, which fits both categories, I couldn't tell.) Yes it is. To us, "English" also includes "Traditional English" such as Morpeth Rant and Cumberland Square Eight. > My brief experience of "Extreme" / "Trash" English was that it was > really specifically an attempt to bring US-urban-contra aesthetic > to English dance / music. Music could be played sleazily, etc - > but with energy. Lots of twirls/flourishes. > > (In the video I was seeing some improv - in one set the women did > an elbows-linked back-basket, which I'd never seen before - but not > so much contra-style flourishes. [Which I think are generally > great in contra but must be used sparingly in English lest you lose > the satisfaction in fitting the geography to the music.] So I'm > arguing that Extreme English seems not quite to be the same thing. > I'd like to see all English over here be more Zesty.) I agree with all of that. Contra dancers in England don't do nearly as many twirls as in the States. And I would guess that most of the people in that video also dance contra. I've never seen an elbows-linked back-basket before either! I imagine it was spontaneous. Colin Hume
