Calling at Kimmswick

Different dance weekends do things differently, but here's how I've coordinated the Kimmswick calling in the past. Please note that I took over the caller coordinating from someone who used to write the available time slots on a sheet of paper, fill his name in at the peak spot, and then hang it up on the wall for anyone to sign up. So I've tended to manage things a little more closely. Not saying it's better.

• I look at the list of attendees for callers I know, ask around for new callers, and then generate a list each night.
• I keep a lot of factors in mind: reputation, parents who need to put toddlers to bed, squares or contras, old-time or other, etc. Callers who are prone to being dance-killers (the ones where people will decide just to go off to bed rather than suffer through interminable walk-thrus) never ever get to go late at night.
• I never ask callers what exact dances they want to do, but I do know who likes to call squares and try not to put them back to back w/others who like to do squares. That way, a caller could do 2 squares if he or she wants to & not have to worry about the next caller wanting to do the same thing.
• I also "program" only to the extent that I like to slot in at least 3 of the more dynamic callers in a clump near to the peak of the evening.
• I will often go first as I know it's not a favorite slot, but if someone is willing to go early or very late, I'll make it up to him/her the next night. As we get older, it's getting harder to find late-night callers.

How can you get to call? You can let me know here that you're interested, look for me at the event, or send me an email. I will just keep your name in mind until I set up the schedule on the first evening.

Slots are on a half-hour basis and you should be able to get 2 dances done during that time. Generally speaking, it's bad form to go over time. If we start late, the breaks go long b/c of some variety show, another caller takes a year and a day, or whatever, I may ask you to really focus on making up some time. If so, keep it short, keep it simple. Doing so is a service to the community, not some personal affront on my part.

Some other things:

• If you're not feeling up to doing 2 dances, that's totally fine & I appreciate your honesty and effort. You can split with any other caller of your choosing.
• There will be a lot of great bands there, so generally speaking, please don't insist that I put you with a certain band. If there is one you like particularly, feel free to let me know, but it may not be possible to work it out. Trust me, they're all good.
• Depending on how many callers are there, you may not get to go every evening (odds are good you will though).
• Being willing to go really early or really late get you bonus points, especially if you keep it relatively simple at the late ones. When I was learning to call, odd times were one of the many things that I did in the name of "paying my dues."
• If you decide to go to bed and are still on the list, please let me know.
• If you want feedback on your calling, I'd be happy to give it, but only if asked. Other callers, I'm sure, will also give you feedback if asked. I hope you take the opportunity to talk to many of the callers and bands that weekend.

Hope that helps answer some of your questions. If you have more, by all means, post them here.

edited to add: I've got to leave now to call a dance out of town, and will have sporadic email for the next few weeks. If I don't get back to you in the nanoseconds that the internet seems to demand, my apologies. I'll be catching up every few days.

The 100th Post - And welcome to new members!

I don't know if it's significant, but this is the 100th post on this blog (not counting comments).

Welcome to new members Reida and Bonnie!

There were eighteen (18!) folks at the Calling Party last night (May 7). We pulled out all the dances we'd been wanting to try, but which needed more than three couples or so. We did one that kind of turned into a double square, and a triple minor, and the Levi Jackson Rag, which needs exactly ten people, and Bob's XYZ, which becomes a lot easier when you don't have to deal with end effects as often. We also did Michael Fuerst's "Where's Alex", in which you do a hey with your home set, then a hey with a second set of new neighbors, a gypsy with yet a third new neighbor, then return to start the dance over with the second set of neighbors. Try that with just four couples! But with eight or nine couples, it's almost doable.

I need a bigger family room.

M
E

Welcome Reida and Bonnie! (Wade and I are not the new guys anymore.)

Why Don't Contra Dancers Like English?

Having fallen in love with English Country Dancing in the last few years simply from playing the music, I now display some of the fanaticism of a convert, and long to find a way to explain to my fellow contra dancers why I think they would love it too.

So I've been reading.

And one of the things I read was this remarkable essay by Henry Morgenstein:

For a number of reasons many contra dancers do not like English Country Dances (ECD). The most common complaint is that ECD is too slow, too stately, and too often some dancers stand around while other dancers get to do all the moves. The complaint against ECD echoes the complaint against "proper" contras: they are not aerobic enough. There is too much standing around & waiting.

There are other reasons why contra dancers do not like English Country Dances. The Swing is the most popular move in Contra dancing and, with the rare exception of one or two dances, there are no swings in English Country Dances. Some English Country Dances are very complex and take a long time to teach. Contra dancers want a minimum of teaching, a maximum of dancing. For some Contra dancers, English Country Dances remind them of pompous nobility, a class system -- all that America is not. I have met dancers who say they can't stand the feelings ECD engenders in them.

Personally, I love the very different feel of English Country Dances. I, too, do not like the more complex English Country Dances. I like the simple flowing dances that do not take too long to teach. In some English Country Dance workshops, I have encountered the contra dancer's ultimate nightmare: 45 minutes of teaching, six minutes of dancing. But there is a beauty in English Country dances that is simply radically different from the beauty found in Contras. In addition, the music is sublime, and it is music that you will miss hearing if all you do is Contra dances.

One final word which is aimed primarily at American dancers. When we think of English Country Dances we are really thinking of one "sub-set" of such dances: Playford Dances, or dances that were popular hundreds of years ago. We think English Country Dance is a "dead" form, an ancient, irrelevant, stagnant form that was done in drawing rooms by genteel nobility and is simply being aped/revived in our time.

We know (or should know) that on any given night, nine out ten of the Contras we dance were written within the last twenty years. If you dance English Country Dances today in England, perhaps eight out ten of the dances were written within the last twenty or thirty years. English Country Dances are a living dance form in England. In England, Contras are merely one kind of English Country Dance. It is only in America that Contras are seen as a totally different kind of dance, one that is not anything like English Country Dances. As I explain in another essay, contras are simply one kind of English Country Dance.

Wow. I had no idea. I thought it was all re-enactment, all the time, and I still loved it. But this is great. If ECD is a living tradition in England, why not here too? Does anyone know of a source of "modern" English dances? Let's see, I've heard of Fried de Metz Herman (spelling?) and Colin Hume and Jenson, and I know that Jenny Beers wrote my favorite dance (okay, maybe it's just my favorite tune), Key to the Cellar. And Chrystal Galliacci. She's good. Anyone know any others?

I've been reading Mary Dart's book on the change in contradancing from the older, slower, less active form of seventy years ago to the "zesty" form we know now, and wonder if that's what happened in England to ECD. Is there a "zesty" English tradition in England now?

Edit added later: Here's a video that suggests that there is a very "zesty" tradition of ECD in England. This is the Newcastle English Country Dancers dancing Mage on a Cree to the tune of Lilibulero.

Edit added even later: Never mind. This is the zesty English tradition from Southern California.



M
E

Hatchlings at Youth Contra and Jovial Beggars Dances

It was a fun weekend for Hatchling callers and for young people in Missouri.

Hatchling Callers called the Youth Contra Dance on Friday night at Larry Boyer's invitation. Many thanks go to Larry for inviting us, and to the callers: Chrystal, Joe, Wade, David, Martha and Bob. Wade did a masterful job with the beginner class.

Bob and Kay and I drove down to Rolla on Saturday night to attend an English Country Dance run by a remarkable young woman, Kimberly Hall. We had arranged with her to let us call some dances. Kay called Knives and Forks, I called Hole in the Wall, and Bob called Jefferson and Liberty. It was amazing, to say the least, to see a hall filled with 60-70 young people, successfully dancing English Country Dances, many at a high level. The band was a family band, mostly - Dad Ed Galbraith plays guitar and his four kids and their friends played keyboard, recorder, fiddle and mandolin, and very well!

M
E

Extra Calling Party Wednesday April 23

Good party last night!

There were at least 13 of us, maybe more if someone was lurking in the kitchen when I counted - ten dancing, one calling, and a couple of people on the couch.

We each called dances we think will be good for the Youth Contra on Friday, and, serendipitously, we were able to make up a good program just from the dances each person chose - circle mixer, easier dances building up to harder ones, then backing off. I'm expecting surprises - either the dances we chose will be a little harder to teach than we thought, or the kids will learn them so fast we should have chosen more challenging dances. They're all reasonably easy and fun dances so we should be able to stick to the program, but I'm braced for a "learning experience".

People often tease me and suggest I ought to learn to call while I play the violin, so what the heck, I'm going to try it. It worked kind of okay at the calling party last night, though each part (the playing and the calling) suffered a bit. I'll let you know how it turns out. No promises, though, especially since I have to get up at 4:30am on Friday for a Blackthorn Morris appearance on St. Louis Today.

M
E

Slow motion car crash

I finally brought myself to listen to my calling on the dance that fell apart, and it was very interesting. First time through, fine, second time through not bad, maybe a little shaky. Third time through, pretty wobbly in parts. Fourth time through I started right on time for A1, but blew it at the beginning of B2. 

The trouble I had was that A2 is a short wavy line balance to a neighbor swing, and I think I was calling it "Balance the line and swing your neighbor" on the 1 2 3 4 counts of A2, as opposed to calling it on the 5 6 7 8 counts of A1b (which is where you would call it if it was just a neighbor balance and swing). As a result, there are only 8 counts where I remain silent, as opposed to 12 counts of silence during a balance and swing. When I finally screwed it up beyond recovery, it happened because I thought that I hadn't waited long enough for the swing to end, so I let the swing go for an extra 8? counts, putting me behind on the calling. In truth, I was skating on thin ice before that point, and had nearly messed up the call 2  or 3 times already. Perhaps those small errors started the confusion on the dance floor.

The tune, Shady Grove,  has a peculiar structure that maybe threw me a little (I think Ellie said that it ends on a 5 chord and starts on a 5 chord, so there isn't a sense of resolution at the end of the tune), but it should have been danceable. To make matters worse, I'm familiar with the tune but I  don't play it, and in my mind I consider the A part of the tune to be the B part. So when I made an attempt to jump in and wrest control of a very confused group of dancers, I started calling A1 of the dance at B1 of the tune, and almost no one was at that spot in the dance.

It reminds me of losing control of my car at high speed on the highway: you swerve a little bit and the end of your car slides out to the right, then back to the left, then further to the right, then further to the left, then suddenly you are going down the highway sideways at 55 mph! Or backwards even (I've had both happen). With the car, I was able to straighten it out and keep moving, but I'd been driving for 15 years before that ever happened to me. Maybe with a little more calling experience I'll be able to do a 360 degree spinout of a contra dance and regain control without stopping, but this time all I could do was hit the emergency brake, get back on the road, and put her back in gear. I think it worked. 

Wade 

Congratulations!

Congrats Hatchings! I think we did really well. Glitches are expected, our recoveries were right on. Let's do it again. (Do we have any dancer feed-back yet?)

Joe

"Challenge" calling?

Just returned from a square dance weekend—lots of fun, way too much food, not enough sleep… all the things we love about dance weekends.

There were two nationally known callers trading off hour-and-a-half time slots in two halls—Mainstream and Plus-level in the gym, Challenge and Advanced dancing in the cafeteria (cement floors all around; need I say more about that?).

One of the callers was great at calling the advanced dances—I watched some of that and it was obvious that those dancers were having a wonderful time. But when her turn came in the other hall, where I was dancing, she either couldn’t or wouldn’t “dumb it down” so that the rest of us could dance, even when the dances were supposed to be Mainstream!

The moves she called were “legal,” all right, but somehow she managed get us so far out of our accustomed positions that it reached the point where it was not fun but chaotic. I’m a fair-to-middling square dancer—been dancing, on and off, for nearly 30 years, including some of what we used to call all-position dancing—and even I nearly walked off the floor twice when she was on because I couldn’t do anything she was calling—NOTHING. I looked around, and seven of the eight squares on the floor had broken down—this happened repeatedly. It wasn’t just me who felt that way: Saturday night one entire square walked off the floor.

Now, when you’re a caller, don’t you try to call more or less at the level of the room? I kept thinking about Mac’s advice for us to have a simpler dance in our back pocket to pull out if the floor breaks down. As a dancer, I like a dance that’s just beyond my comfort zone as well as the next person. But if you as a caller challenge your dancers, shouldn’t it be a challenge, not an attempt to see how many of them you can break down?

Luckily, the second caller was fabulous and wonderful to dance to. Lots of dancing from unaccustomed positions in the square, which was fun; I learned a lot, that’s for sure.

New Order of Dances for April 6

We had a wonderful Calling Party last night - lots of good folks were willing to help us get ready for the dance. I think we were about 15. I didn't do a count, but I seem to remember three foursomes dancing, one person calling and a couple of people sitting on the couch sipping wine, didn't we?

Anyway, the dances went mostly okay, though there were some scary spots. We have revised the list a bit - here's the new version:

1. Blackbird Pie by Joseph Pimentel - Martha
2. Reel Easy by Cary Ravitz - Joe
3. Al's Safeway Produce by Robert Cromartie - Chrystal
4. Rendezvous by Dan Pearl - Kay
5. Right Hand Lady - traditional Square - Wade
6. Al's HeyDay#2 by Al Olsen - Joe
Waltz

Break

7. Blue Persuasion by Chrystal Gallacci - Chrystal
8. You Can't Get There From Here by Carol Ormand - Wade
9. XYZ by Bob Green - Bob
10. Chain the Swain by Becky Hill - David
11. Delphiniums and Daisies by Tanya Rotenberg - Martha
Waltz

As I sit here, I'm wondering if we shouldn't make the first half shorter. We went through the easy dances pretty fast and yet people were ready for a break after the fifth dance. Maybe that's an omen. Also, we sometimes manage to get a clogging performance out of Leila and Ellie, which would take up some more of the time, so I'm wondering if we shouldn't put one of the dances in an optional spot in the second half.

M
E