On 2/11/2014 4:11 PM, Dave Casserly wrote:
I find experienced dancers often take longer than 6 beats to circle three places. Regardless of whether callers should be teaching to beginners during a walkthrough, it can help experienced dancers to hear exactly how many counts a move should take in a particular dance. It's something a lot of ECD callers do, but you don't see it much in contra.
This may be a specific instance of something I have noticed from time to time. I will be talking to a person who would undoubtedly describe themselves as an experienced dancer, one who has been doing contra dance for many years. I will say something in passing about the length, in beats, of a given figure or about the 64 beat length of a contra dance and they will look surprised, because it has never occurred to them that figures have a specific length, or that all contra dances are the same length, or that the music and dance go together. This sometimes surprises me as well, in the case of people I know for certain have been present many times when these sort of things were mentioned by the caller. So it may be that callers are telling the dancers the number of beats they have for a given figure, I know that I do this fairly often, but the dancers fail to absorb the information for one reason or another.
Jonathan ----- Jonathan Sivier Caller of Contra, English and Early American Dances jsivier AT illinois DOT edu Dance Page: http://www.sivier.me/dance_leader.html ----- Q: How many angels can dance on the head of a pin? A: It depends on what dance you call!
