Often when I close a ONS dance with a circle, I have the dancers find their original parents for a swing & promenade. Rich
On Wed, Oct 24, 2018 at 5:14 PM jim saxe via Callers < callers@lists.sharedweight.net> wrote: > Good advice from both Alan and Rich. I agree with Rich that you could > repeat more than one well-received dance from last time. > > Alan wrote: > > > and have a couple slightly more challenging ones - with progression, etc > - up your sleeve but without any emotional investment in actually using > them. > > Definitely agree on the "without any emotional investment" part. > Long-term, do you have an ambition for these events to evolve into "contra" > dances, or would you be happy as a clam to keep having events where > facility at ending a swing side-by-side with the _____ on the left and the > _____ on the right is not an important skill, so long as you have a room > full of smiling dancers? > > I have a few comments and questions about your notes: > > The notes say "beginner's lesson (circle, Lark Raven, ...)" but the dance > descriptions use "ladles" and "gentlespoons". What terms did you actually > use? If you used "Larks" and "Ravens", did you say anything at all about > their relation to traditional gender roles? In practice how much > correlation was there between what people looked like and which role they > danced in? > > Leaving aside the waltz and the polka, it looks like the only two dances > where the roles of Lark/Gentlespoon vs. Raven/Ladle were significant were > the roll away dance and Mad Scatter. > > Notes on the roll away dance say "succeeded at walkthrough, weren't going > to make it through the dance." If you could tell, did the confusion seem > to have to do with figuring out wha was in what role, or was it mostly > about something else, such as getting from the star to the lines of four? > > [Two side comments on that dance: (1) Notes say "This variation is Wade > Pearson's, removing the right-left-through. ...", but the "original" > version you link to doesn't have a right and left through. It has a cross > trail. (2) Personally, I don't think it would be a great loss to drop this > dance from the repertoire, regardless of the role terminology or the manner > of setting up the lines of four. I could say more on both points but don't > want to go even further off topic.] > > The other dance description that mentions the roles is Mad Scatter. How > did that work out in practice? I note that it doesn't really matter which > member of each pair goes into the center for an allemande or star and which > one orbits, provided nobody minds who they get for new partner. But I'm > curious about what actually happened. > > Notes on Mad Scatter say "Avoid a mixer last even though they voted for > it." Do you have reason to believe that people were disappointed about > that? I certainly know of many dance series where people would bristle at > having a mixer as the "last" dance of the evening (even if followed by a > waltz as the really last dance), but I'm wondering whether you actually > sensed such bristling at your event. Note also Rich's comment on ending a > barn dance with a circle mixer. > > --Jim > > _______________________________________________ > List Name: Callers mailing list > List Address: Callers@lists.sharedweight.net > Archives: https://www.mail-archive.com/callers@lists.sharedweight.net/ >
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