> Late in a regular evening dance a caller recently threw in a contra
with larks and robins progressing in opposite directions or at
different rates. Although it was announced as a mixer, it was
sufficiently unexpected that chaos and discomfort ensued. I'd have
been happier with that in a workshop setting. "Dance with who's
coming at you."
David, I'd love to have this dance for uh, scientific purposes and
certainly not to sow chaos 👀
--
Maia McCormick (she/her)
917.279.8194
On Wed, Jan 24, 2024 at 10:02 PM David Harding via Contra Callers
<[email protected]> wrote:
I've attended several workshops with this theme, led on different
occasions by Carol Ormand and Jo Mortland. A few of the exercises
have been described already, including teaching the dance to half
of each couple and not calling, messing with the music, dancing
with pool noodles, and dancing to the calling of figures with
names as nonsensical as our familiar figures are to first time
dancers.
A variant on the pool noodle theme used one teddy bear in each square.
One of my favorites is a different approach to the lost dancer
situation. After the group takes hand four, the caller one dancer
from each minor set, shuffling around which one. They go to the
bottom and make new minor sets. This leaves one empty spot in
each set occupied by a ghost. The teaching and calling proceeds,
with the dancers having to find their ways through the dance
without the orientation of the full set. As the dance progresses,
sometimes a whole set of four materializes,sometimes it's three
dancers, sometimes it's only two. This really emphasizes
awareness of your position in the set. It's also a useful skill
when a partner or neighbor doesn't show up at the right place and
time.
I've danced with a fraction of the dancers in a contra set
blindfolded. I also remember a simple square that we danced
multiple times, increasing the number of blindfolded dancers by
one each time through. Again, positional awareness and
communication.
A dance with enforced taking of everyone's less familiar role can
help build acceptance.
One time we were divided into two sets, one with all gents and the
other with all ladies. Some gents came away impressed by how
violently they were being swung around while dancing as robins
while some ladies complained about the wimpy larks they danced
with. And some in both lines enjoyed the better matches of forces
and energy.
Late in a regular evening dance a caller recently threw in a
contra with larks and robins progressing in opposite directions or
at different rates. Although it was announced as a mixer, it was
sufficiently unexpected that chaos and discomfort ensued. I'd
have been happier with that in a workshop setting. "Dance with
who's coming at you."
On 1/24/2024 11:35 AM, Maia McCormick via Contra Callers wrote:
Whoops, I never came back to this, but, some exercises I've
done/seen/considered:
- half the room gets the walkthrough and half doesn't, the ones
who got the walkthrough need to guide the others through the
dance NONVERBALLY
- nonsense dance: substitute all the dance vocab with random
words, define a few terms for every dancer, call a nonsense
dance and the hall has to piece together what's what
- excision dance (requires real tight collab with the band): take
a simple dance and, once the hall has it, you and the band
conspire to just drop 8 or 16 counts at a time (or more!) and
dancers need to get themselves in place for the next move. E.g.
if the dance ends with a chain + star and starts with a new
neighbor, you might call "robins chain... new neighbor balance
and swing" and the band goes to the top of A1 (i.e. cutting out
the last 8 beats of B2). Dancers need to know how the dance flows
and where moves start and end to compensate for missing moves
- noodly beginners: this one is a Lindsey Dono gem. You've got a
bunch of friends coming, they're raw beginners, who will
volunteer to dance with them and get them through the next dance?
And the friends in question turn out to be... pool noodles. How
do dancers accommodate partners who quite literally can't do a
single thing?
- esp. in very slanted halls, I've challenged dancers to do a
dance with lots of movement up/down the line (think 3-33-33)
without the sets getting bent out of shape. That's it, that's the
whole challenge.
- a good exercise on its own or can be combined with the above:
practice dropping a full hands-4 out of the set. This is a
recovery skill that isn't necessarily taught, but if e.g. one
dancer has an injury or urgently needs to drop out, the thing to
do is to remove your entire hands-4 from the set (and people can
re-enter from the bottom if they still want to dance). I ran
around with various hats, placing them on people's heads to
denote an "injury"—that person had to then nonverbally get their
hands-4 out of the set, and was then licensed to put the "injury"
hat on someone else's head. (Could also be done with tagging
people out.)
- i've seen some dancers put bandanas on arms/hands/shoulders to
represent an injury, and folks interacting with them need to
notice and be cognizant of it/modify around it
- i wrote my dance Neighbor, Neighbor on the Wall
<https://contra.maiamccormick.com/dances.html#neighborneighboronthewall>
for an exercise where the first time meeting this neighbor, you
communicated a preference or stylistic request about the swing,
and the second time you met them, you got to enact that
preference/request.
- "practice saying no": normal dance but dancers are encouraged
to non-verbally say "no thank you" to flourishes/spins/fancy
things at least n times during the dance. Good practice for
communicating and listening for non-verbal "no's"
- beginner detection: randomly assign beginner-like dance flaws
to a number of the dancers (think "always a beat late", "dizzy",
"grips tight and moves slow", "always looks in the wrong
direction", etc.). Dancers without an assigned flaw practice
quickly evaluating someone they're dancing with and getting a
sense of skill level/whether they need extra help, and then
providing that help. (If you want to "check people's work", you
could at the end have all the assigned-beginner dances identify
themselves, and everyone else can see if they clocked folks
correctly.)
I've done a lot of workshops like this so I've got a lot of junk
to suggest, ha. Hope some of this is useful (and that I haven't
missed my window for suggesting things—apologies for the delay!).
Let us know how it goes!
Cheers,
Maia
--
Maia McCormick (she/her)
917.279.8194
On Wed, Jan 17, 2024 at 1:54 PM Emily Addison via Contra Callers
<[email protected]> wrote:
Hey Folks,
Thanks so much to all those who have chimed in on the
question I posted.
Really neat that people like Richard and Joseph had
experienced a similar activity as me. And fascinating
discussion about sharing weight John, Joseph and others! I
really like the idea that every allemande/swing is a new
opportunity for connecting with someone different and
figuring out that connection. I think it was Will Mentor that
referred to enjoying the little differences in every swing
which made me all the more present and noticing what I liked
about different people's swings.
I'm wondering if there are any other particular fun
activities to do with dancers who already know the basics but
who want to improve their dancing ability/understanding?
:) Emily
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