Roger and Me

Roger Diggle's pretty much a star now. But you knew that. He comes in, fairly big and shaggy these days, looking intense but behaving gently. He called a dance I was playing with Stringdancer in Minneapolis. There were well over 100 dancers there, and the beginner class beforehand had about thirty or forty people in it, with very few ringers. Ouch! But he handled it really well, except for one problem at the beginning.

The beginners didn't quite get broken up and spread around before the first dance, so the first dance was rocky (just in their line). I think it would be interesting to discuss what we think we should do if we found ourselves in that situation. Forty newcomers, right in the middle of the hall, and a bunch of experienced dancers at the bottom and sides, already lined up and ready to go.

Hmmm...

I found out that Roger's dance "Roll in the Hey" was NOT made up to teach beginners a hey, as I've always thought. He just wondered what would happen if you came out of a hey into a circle left. He was testing just that move with some folks, and made up the quickest dance he could think of to fill in before the move - and was pretty surprised when it got popular. These days it's almost always on people's Greatest Hits list.

It's funny. Roger's become such a legend (the dancewriting, the calling, the whistling, the late night whistling-calling-guitarplaying) that I actually felt a little like I was around royalty or something. I mean, I didn't say "Yes, your majesty" or anything, but there was a little self-conscious shyness that crept in.

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