Extra Session to Practice English

We had a wonderful "extra" session to practice calling English last night. Chrystal and Kay and Bob and I were joined by Larry and Marianne, Wade, Reida, and, for a nice first, by seven-letter-Deborah.

Deborah, as we all know, is an extremely experienced and talented caller. I believe she could actually herd cats if needed. She offered many good tips, including admonishing me not to get sidetracked by questions from the floor (Moi? Sidetracked?).

We talked a lot about using your voice and about microphones and monitors. Wade talked about how difficult it is to mic a caller who is inconsistent - sometimes loud, sometimes soft, sometimes close to the mic, sometimes far away. We talked about the relative merits of a calling monitor and I think we agreed they're a really nice-to-have.

Deborah also suggested that I was using too many words calling The Haymakers, so together with Kay and Chrystal, we did some serious liposuction on the calls, teaching me some new "English" in the process. Who could have figured that "Hands across half way" means "Take right hands in a hands-across star, and turn the star two places"? Five syllables instead of sixteen. Or "First corners cast around" instead of "First Man cast down, Second Woman cast up"? At least that was better than "First Man turn over his left shoulder to walk down the outside past the Second Man, Second Woman turn over her left shoulder to walk up the outside past the First Woman." But wow. "First corners cast around." Sweet.

We had another go at St. Louis, too. At this rate, I think several of us are finally actually understanding this dance! We should make a video, put it up on YouTube and tell Colin.

Today I went all crazy and figured out how a Triple Minor works. I should probably have learned this by dancing a few, but as I'm calling one next Tuesday, I had to go the diagram route.

I first just tried out the progressions as I (mistakenly) thought they would work (columns are the times through the dance, letters are the couples, numbers are the roles played by each couple each time through the dance, and the highlighting shows a complete set of three couples doing the dance):

You can see that poor couple F stayed at the bottom of the set the entire dance. :-(

Much good input from Bob and Kay and Chrystal via e-mail revealed that when there are two couples out at the bottom, they dance with a ghost couple, which reverses their positions, leading to this:


Note that in column 2, D1 and F2 are to be dancing with G(host)3. The same in columns 5, 8 etc.

You must dance the dance four, seven or ten (or 13, 16, 19) times to have everyone dancing the last time through. Heck, a mere 19 times through, and if you are dancing with six couples, you will have gone through every configuration in the dance, ending with all couples dancing where they danced the first time through.

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