Last night I had a five-minutes chat with some beginners at the break.
This was at the second occurrence of a newly-started series of monthly
community dances. The crowd was half-and-half experienced and new
dancers. It was mostly squares, a few circle mixers, one reel, one
contra. My wife and I and a couple of friends went as dancers to have
fun and support the venture.
After a little chit chat with a group of three couples, one of the
questions I was asked was something that is generally on the minds of
everyone trying something new: What happens if we get messed up? How
do we recover? My response was three-fold. 1) Smile. 2) If you get
behind, skip something and resynchronize. 3) Every [square] dance has
at least one place where you go back home and swing your partner, so
there is a natural point to reset.
It seems to me that the last point is something that might be worth
mentioning in any discussion of the general flow of the dance. One
feature of an easy contra dances is having one or two very clear reset
points with relatively loose timing. I think that's one of the, perhaps
subconscious, reasons that dances tat start with a neighbor balance and
swing or a neighbor do-si-do work especially well.
David Harding
