Hi,
I believe that the most important thing you can teach new contra
dancers is how to Swing well.
It has been estimated that, if you have an evening of modern
contra dances, then you will spend THIRTY MINUTES Swinging!
It is crucial to make sure everyone can Swing well. And please
don’t rely on the “experienced” dancers to teach the Swing; they are quite
likely to pass on bad habits!
See https://contrafusion.co.uk/SwingWorkshop.html for tutorial
videos and essays on Swinging and hints & tips for teaching it.
For beginner-heavy sessions I add in Circle Mixers, Sicilian
Circles, easy Squares, Triplets and anything else to give variety (like they
did in the old days, before contra dance evenings polarized into just contras).
Variety is the spice of life! For over 100 different formations see
https://contrafusion.co.uk/Formations.html!
I also avoid Allemande 1.5. Mainly because it is so often so
badly performed, with so many dancers treating it as arm-wrestling. There are
much better ways to cross the set!
You will find the combined wisdom of this discussion group on
Allemandes at https://contrafusion.co.uk/Allemande.html .
I personally find dances with both Partner Balance & Swing and
Neighbour Balance & Swing rather tedious; add in a simple transition between
the two and nearly three-quarters of the dance is just Swinging. I love
Swinging, but not at the expense of making the dance boring.
If you are going to run dances like that, then I would recommend
only running them 7 or 9 times through, then moving on to give variety.
I hope that helps.
Happy dancing,
John
John Sweeney, Dancer, England [email protected] 01233 625 362 & 07802 940
574
http://www.contrafusion.co.uk for Dancing in Kent
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