We did it! We had a calling party. We called, we danced, we talked, we ate and drank and we want to do it again. Next week!
We danced for a while on Kay's back deck, but soon abandoned the 100-degree temps for the coolness of the living room. The deck was later taken over by a troupe of raccoons wondering why they felt like doing California twirls.
Once inside, we held a sort of caller's circle, and discussed lots of the basics: how to call at all, what to say at the beginning, the importance of the teaching, how to deal with bands, how to use a microphone (and how to breathe to project), the differences in calling English and Contra - and other things (commenters please fill in here). Ted was our true expert, but lots of people contributed really helpful observations.
We tried group calling. Won't do that again.
We tried the Lisa Harris trick, where each person in the couple out at the top calls a line or two. That was promising.
Bob tried out a new dance he's writing. It'll be terrific when the kinks are worked out. I tried calling an English Country Dance. That was...instructive. I'm kind of like a person who has had a semester of High School French trying to speak French in France, or maybe in Sweden (since we were mostly contradancers). Thank goodness Sue was there to help straighten things out. I have much to learn. But we knew that...
Many thanks to everyone who came - Kay and Larry and Marianne and Bob and Martha and Ted and Judy and Chrystal and Don and David and Wade and Sue!
Next week we'll meet on Wednesday (August 15) at 7:00pm at Ted and Judy's in University City. Anyone who wants to will bring a dance to call, and we'll try to fit in as much actual calling as we can.
M
E
3 comments:
Yes indeedy, it was a fabulous evening! I feel like I learned a tremendous amount, and am ever so grateful to all of you who came and made it possible.
I thought you did a fine job, Martha, at calling the English dance. It was instructive to see the pitfalls--but also FUN to work it out.
Part of the difficulty, as Bob pointed out, was the space. Amazing how the close quarters didn't allow us to see that the timing might have been different, until we actually counted it out. That's one of the most interesting things that came up last night: how the different dance forms use space, and the different impact that a limited amount of space makes in contra and in English.
Remember last Sunday at contra we had FOUR lines! It was tight, but didn't stop us from dancing. If it had been an English country dance, it probably wouldn't have worked at all.
It was really fun looking specifically a the calling for an English dance. Having done English for a while, I knew there were differences between it and contra, but I could never have articulated them before. What fun learning about a dance form you love from such a different perspective!
I'm looking forward to next week!
What I meant to say in the next-to-last paragraph was that I knew there were differences between calling English and contra, but could not have articulated them.
And another thing from our discussion that seems really important to me is the difference in the words you use to teach the dance and the words you use to call it. Maybe that's pretty obvious, but it was enlightening to me. Like telling people, when you're teaching, that they'll come out of a swing facing down the hall, or facing across the set, or whatever. Then, when you call, you don't have to explain it. (At least, that's what I thought I heard--others please correct me if I got it wrong.)
Yes, I was pretty shocked when the "star right half-way, half rights and lefts" didn't work. I had SO checked them out at home.
Perhaps, in a situation of tight dancing (or with modern folks in more athletic attire) I should just change the dance to "star right once around, rights and lefts all the way around." You still end up progressed, but without having to take up so much space or slow to a crawl during that part of the dance.
I look forward to doing that dance someday in a large drawing room in ball gowns. I got the dance, after all, from a book of dances that were done at George Washington's Birthday Balls.
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