Tonight's mink hole dive uncovered this post - which was likely lost in the
passion of other threads circa the time... I found it unopened in my mail
queue but like what I see now.
Luke, what happened to this dance - has it been called successfully?
On Sat, Oct 31, 2015 at 10:33 AM, Luke
I wanted to share a contra written in honor of Linda Leslie - it was called
this weekend in a session with the Youth Festival Orchestra at the 2018 New
England Folk Festival to a nice reception. Full details at
http://veino.com/blog/?p=1990 .
May it bring dancers joy - as did she.
-Don
*¡Que
No disrespect, but
This reminds me of a few decades back when a particular programming
language introduced some instructions with "WICKED", (I mean WICKED!)
side effects.
What ensued were many discussions about how to handle these instructions.
Whereupon one of my colleagues came up with
On 2018-04-21 10:05 PM, Luke Donforth via Callers wrote:
Are there dances that use star just half way -> with next, opposite hand
star 1/2 way?
Yup. Restricting to duple minors, there's:
(longways:)
"Complexity and Confusion" by Lynn Douglas
Zesty Contras, p41
"Contraindicated" by Keith
I have called Starring Loretta as well as many ECD with half stars and concur
that it is a harder move for dancers than one would expect. This may be a
muscle memory issue. It feels more like a four hand pull by than a star because
there's no sense of rotation. The move is more linear than
Yes, several English country dances have this; the move is sometimes called
“falling stars” (when there are 3 or 4 in a row). I think the difficulty comes
from people not expecting to move on to a new couple after just 4 counts—we’re
used to doing things that only take 4 counts, but moving to a
See also Franklin flank by nils Fredland for similar (allenandes to star to
Allemande, similar feel) and Carol Ormand’s Double Dare.
As is said, half stars are devilishly tricky.
Perhaps someone has fabulous teaching tips with half stars?
Sent from my iPhone
On Apr 22, 2018, at 10:13 AM, Bob
You caught me with that question!
I have a Sicilian Circle from Margo Gunzenhauser called "5 O'Clock Circle". You
could, of
course do it in contra lines but the end effects would be disasterous, rather
more than the
dance you propose. Margo's dance (likely learned from Ted Sanella) is as
I have an English dance that has a similar sequence, with one half star,
then a full star with new neighbors and another full star back with
original neighbors. As Chris suggests, I find that part a bit trickier to
teach than I expected. The difficulty is in the orientation (particularly
on the
Luke,
A couple of concerns about your dance:
- Second version: Your dance appears to be reverse progression, if you
begin the left hand stars with the neighbor you just swung. It's not
entirely clear though (that neighbor isn't numbered).
- First version: If instead you force the progression to
Just a heads-up.
There's a number of ECD dances, especially 4-couple set dances, that have a
sequence of progressive 1/2 stars.
When teaching them, I find them to be the hardest part of the dance for dancers,
and where it's most likely to break down.
So the difficulty level may be more than you
Luke I think you've come up with something original. The only dances I know of
that have a series of half stars were written by Rod Linnel. He came up with a
figure (i believe) he called grand star and used in a double square.
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