Chestnuts

I was going to comment, but this really merits a full post.

The Miller Brothers CD isn't that great for calling, especially "Money Musk." I had bought it with that purpose in mind, but it's too improvisational and the tune length doesn't match the way the dance is danced. It's also very, very fast. Startlingly so.

I'm really loving the Henry Ford CD right now. I ordered it from Stig Malmo and it was definitely worth the money ($30 for 2 CDs, including postage). It has "Money Musk" and a ton of other great music and calling on it. Most dances are on there w/ and w/o calls. I also own the companion book in my personal dance library and would be happy to bring it to a dance for anyone to look at. Just remind me.

The trad caller's yahoo group really helped me to understand why I was having trouble puzzling out the Miller Bros. CD. Go join. Lurk if you like. Learn a lot, especially about more traditional dances. Right now they're talking about "Strip Ninepin."

In addition, the CDSS (are you a member yet?) column on cracking chestnuts spoke to the evolution of the "Money Musk" tune and dance. There's one on "Hull's Victory" too, which specifically recommends a forward & back balance.

Dancing these so-called chestnuts, btw, really isn't that old. These are the dances that Childgrove was dancing back in the late 70s.

I was talking to Larry about it last night, and he said that they used to dance all night long, and the unequal dances is what let them do that--he said no one ever sat out a dance. In addition, he said, the fact that the inactives stood back gave the active couples room to really dance hot and hard. I hadn't thought about it before, but what he said made a lot of sense.

Calling Party December 19

Didn't we just have a blast tonight?

We got off to a fast start, with Wade, Larry, Bob, David, Maryanne, Kay, Deb, and Martha plunging right in trying to figure out how to make Hull's Victory seem easy. We had danced it last Sunday, and though Deborah called it excellently, we danced it rather badly. I remarked to Deborah that we just weren't that good at moves we weren't used to doing. She pointed out that the dance has a bunch of allemandes and balances, a square through, and a down the hall, hardly "unusual" moves. Yet it was really hard for us to be in the right place at the right time. Why, then, did it seem so difficult?

A couple of us were just curious enough that we thought it would be useful to take it apart at the calling party. We came up with a couple of observations. The allemandes seemed too fast. How could you get around twice in only eight counts? Or once in four? Well, we discovered, you shouldn't do our usual allemande, which puts us at half an arm's length away from each other. Instead, you do the allemandes with your arms tucked pretty close to your chest. At that distance, it's easy to get around with no rushing at all. Then we also found that the balances went better if they were forward and back balances instead of side to side - that made a huge difference. And the timing on the down the hall! Ohmgod, who knew? A "Turn as a couple" takes four counts. So does a cast around. So if we went down the hall for our usual 6 counts, turned and came back, that would be 6 + 4 + 6 + 4, or 20 counts. Since there are only 16 counts of music for that section, it's no wonder we were always late. So we learned to go down the hall only four counts, turn, and come back for four counts, leaving the necessary 4 counts for the cast off. The final thing was to learn to do the rights and lefts of the square through using four counts of the music for each one instead of our usual two counts. Rather than go slowly, which feels weird, we found we could do a kind of "one two three and turn" "one two three and turn" and it felt both fun and on time. We had the "New England Chestnuts" album version of Hull's Victory to dance to, and though it did not make converts of us all, many of us ended up liking the dance a bunch.

Later on, Reida and Joe and Chystal and Alice showed up, so we were able to have a full complement of dancers for most of the evening even when some of us were enjoying the holiday snacks. Bob called Roll in the Hey and Jefferson and Liberty, which he will call this Sunday as Mac's guest caller. Mac called a contra that goes to the Liberty Bell March (aka the Monty Python theme song), Chrystal called an updated version of Female Saylor, Joe called Beneficial Tradition, and as the high point of the evening we all danced Roll in the Hey to our own singing. Our version of Jingle Bells was very modern, very polytonal, for the first few verses, but eventually settled into the more traditional "one key". I have to admit I laughed every time we got around to "one horse open sleigh, Hey!" just before the hey.

We got to talking about chestnuts (thanks, Deborah!) and one thing led to another, and pretty soon we were attempting Money Musk, with Wade calling, and the Miller brothers' New England Chestnuts CD on the boombox. It took us a while to figure out the timing, but we got it sometimes, and then it was really fun. I love the tune and would love to get to play it sometime.

There was wine and there were brownies and there was Mexican stuff and Trader Joe stuff and wine and fruit cake and green cookies and did I mention wine? A few of us sat around talking for pretty long afterwards - mostly about music, rather than calling, but it was All Good.

Fire, Fire, Fire

I seem to recall that you all were working on a quadrille that had the dancers going in and shouting "fire, fire, fire." I just got a copy from Denmark of Henry Ford's Early American Dances on 2 CDs. One dance is "Fireman's Dance, Circle Quadrille, With Calls" and seems similar to what you were working on.

Is it possibly the same?

Calling Party this Wednesday, December 19

It's lovely. A few people have discovered that the calling parties are a good way to get in an extra night of dancing! And we thank you for your sacrifice.

My house, 7:00pm. E-mail me if you need directions.

There is much to do, much to discuss! We have a Contra calling opportunity coming up the day after Christmas, as well as New Year's Eve, and there's the English Country Dance Christmas Ball on January 5, at which some of us may be calling.

I used my shiny new CDSS membership discount to get the entire set of ECD dance CDs put out by Bare Necessities, so now we'll have a lot of music already recorded to dance to. (My offer continues to stand, in addition, to provide a practice tape of any piece you want to call a dance to, in case it isn't on the Bare Necessities CDs.) I also now have the big Playford book, so we can be up to date on the popular dances of the day, so long as the day is a couple of centuries ago.

I'm also working on getting a representative group of tunes for contras with clear "potatoes" ready for us to choose from, complete with beats per minute counts. I've divided them roughly into "old time" and "not old time". If you own any favorites you'd like to dance to, just bring the CD!

M
E

Calling at the Waltz Party

An update for those of you who couldn't be there: Martha's birthday celebration at last night's Waltz Party was a great success. Miss Martha herself called the "Levi Jackson Rag" and had three full sets dancing it and enjoying themselves. Bob taught the "Spanish Waltz," a Sicilian circle dance. Lovely to see an entire room full of people doing it gracefully and well.

Congratulations and happy birthday, Martha!

Practice Practice Practice

Wow. We're actually doing it!

All of our regular Childgrove callers have graciously offered spots to us fledgling callers in the coming months. Here is the list I have (correct me if I'm wrong!):

Sunday, December 16, Deborah calling - Wade
Sunday, Dec 23, Mac calling - Bob
Monday, Dec 31, open calling - Wade, David, Larry
Sunday, Jan 6, Judy calling - David and Chrystal
Sunday, Jan 20, Ted calling - Martha
Sunday, Jan 27, Mac calling - Kay
Sunday, Feb 3, Judy calling - Wade (plus one more TBD)
Sunday, Feb 17, Mac calling - Joe F
Sunday, Mar 3, Deborah calling - Martha

Also, my fellow hatchlings, we can ask Larry for Eileen's number to pester her about calling a dance at the Youth contra on Dec 26, and we can also importune Eric (or Deborah) to see if we can call a community-type dance in Elsah. AND, John and Kathy Coffman have invited us to come down any old time to call a dance or two at the Cape Girardeau dance. Personally, I'm not sure I'm ready to call a dance to anyone who couldn't do it if I just read them the card, but I guess it's time to try... Maybe they'd like to do one of those Victorian-period Blind-man's Bluff Parlor Games.

M
E

Calling for the "Kids"

Now that I've finally joined the dancecaller blog, I thought I may as well share my experience calling for the post-Thanksgiving Youth Contra dance. This was a very different experience than calling a dance for a room full of experienced dancers, or for that matter, for a room half-filled with experienced dancers. I think four people shared the calling duties (Larry, Eileen, me, and some young girl whose name I forget). I would guess there were around 30 dancers, maybe 10 of whom were experienced. As a result, small mistakes made on the dance floor were not self-correcting, and neighboring dancers couldn't (didn't) do much to straighten things out when things went amiss. Now, the flip side of this is that the dancers were really rather well behaved and attentive! There was very little chatter on the floor during the walk-throughs, and they really seemed to want to figure out how the dances worked. 

I called two dances during the evening: Reel Easy by Cary Ravitz, and Duck Soup by David Kirchner (which I had called at Childgrove's open calling dance). Reel Easy was the first dance I called, and Larry graciously provided me with a video of my teaching and calling of that dance, which is VERY instructive to watch. To my shame, the teaching took over 8 minutes! (Other callers had similar times). Why so long? Partly because I wanted to make sure that the dancers had really learned how the dance worked, so I was being very deliberate in teaching, but on reviewing the video I think that I was perhaps too tentative. The dance starts neighbor do-si-do, neighbor swing, but by the end of the swing there was at least one couple with the lady and gent on the wrong side of each other. I saw one couple in the wrong place and corrected them, but the video shows that I missed another couple. The next move was long lines, then ladies allemande right in the center 1 1/2, and with people out of place there was confusion. At that point I decided to start again and there was a request to split the dance into 2 lines, so we did that. Already, 4 minutes had elapsed! On the second time through, an entire set of dancers again ended the first swing out of position, but this time I spotted it. As callers we are not supposed to say "Yo, guy in the glasses and beard, the lady goes on your RIGHT!" I think I said "You should end the swing with the lady on the right side, so that lines on the sides are alternating men and women. If two men are next to each other, one of you is in the wrong spot." I don't think this worked very well. 

Eventually, some one on the floor got them positioned correctly. They did the lines forward and back, ladies allemande 1.5, partner balance and swing just fine. With the circle left 3 places, neighbor allemande right one time, pull by right to new neighbor one set got mixed up. I stopped to straighten them out, but in the time it took to do that, one couple decided that they didn't have a couple to dance with and moved from the center of the left line to the end of the right line (in fact, the next couple just had not yet caught up to the pull by right to the next neighbor). Nothing to do now but say "Um, you folks can't leave the middle of the set! You have to come back, it will work, trust me!" To my great relief, when they came back I did a second walk-through and it went smoothly. I sent the dancers back to place and started the dance, and bless them, they danced it! I had to keep doing partial calls for most of the dance to prevent it breaking down (there was a brief collapse in the right line, but they recovered), but they got through it, and judging by the applause they had a blast. 

I don't have a video of how "Duck Soup" went, but I think that teaching that worked better: I had more prior experience with that dance and the dancers had more experience by the second half of the evening. Perhaps the biggest snafu was that I split the long line into two short lines, and then had to move it back to one long line. 

In short, it was an eye-opening experience. Novice dancers throw curve-balls at you! Being under-prepared in such a situation causes problems. I didn't know my first dance that well and came off weak in teaching it, killing at least 2-3 minutes in the process as a result. However, it was really very thrilling when they responded so positively after each dance. Its one thing to get applause from experienced contra dancers, but when you get it from dancers who maybe don't know how much fun they can be having it means even more. And the applause isn't even for you the caller, its for the whole thing that just happened, and you had a part in making that happen. 

Calling Party December 5

Great party on Wednesday! By my count, there were fourteen of us here!
Among other things, we celebrated Chrystal's birthday a day early. She was BORN on St. Nicholas's day, December 6. Pretty cool, huh, having Santa Claus as your patron saint?

Three of our experienced callers called interesting dances with some problematic moves in them. We learned the subtle difference between a "star through" and a "California Twirl." They're both "twirl to swap" moves done by exactly the same people with exactly the same hands, but, get this, a "star through" is done with inside hands (each couple holding hands nearest the center of their group of four), whereas a "California twirl" uses outside hands (each couple holding hands furthest from the center of their group of four), like this (imagine you're the solid people):

1)Beginning of the Star Through
2)End of the Star Through, beginning of the California Twirl
3)End of the California Twirl, facing new set

Chrystal also brought us the "Swing Through," which I'll try later to remember and diagram. Something about a bunch of half Allemandes. Very fun.

We finally had enough people to do "The Levi Jackson Rag", which I have been wanting to call for ages, so even without preparation (sorry, Kiran!) I tried it out. Thanks to Eric's having called it before and telling me the trick to making the 5-handed star easy to do (The trick is to say "Leave one, pass one, get one!"), we were able to do it without breakdown all five times through. What a thrill! And thanks to Yankee Ingenuity for having the music on their CD.

Ted was kind enough to answer my call for spots on the calling roster with an offer this weekend, first come first served. I waited two hours to see if anyone else wanted it, but you must have been getting your Christmas shopping done, so I got to call Sunday night. It seemed to go okay - a couple of people said I was too quiet (including Wade, who was the sound guy but was having too much fun dancing to turn it up) but others said they had no trouble. The band played pretty lickety split for a dance that has three different allemandes in an 8-count period, but it was probably my fault for calling Southern Swing and asking for a hot dance. The dancers looked really good from the stage, however. What a great place to watch a dance from!

The next contradance open calling opportunity is New Year's Eve. In addition, Mac, Ted, Judy and Deborah have offered to let one or the other of us call a dance whenever they're calling. Here's their schedule for the next couple of months:
December 16 - Deborah
December 23 - Mac
December 31 - New Year's Eve - open calling
January 6 - Judy
January 12 - Deborah
January 20 - Ted
January 27 - Mac
February 3 - Judy
February 17 - Mac
March 3 - Deborah

Think about when you'd like to call and let them know. The other folks calling during this period are Lisa Harris and Paula McFarling. If you're friends with one of them, see if you can wangle a spot with one of them as well! Practice, practice, practice.

Now if we could just figure out how to get some practice calling English...

M
E

Taking Hands Four

Who would have thought that how a caller gets people to take hands four would be a controversial issue? That's why it's fun to talk with Kiran - he has a very long list of things he's thought about, and has, um, strong opinions about them, but he still rather enjoys a contrary opinion.

He says that it's the caller's job to make sure that the sets have formed, and that the teaching should not begin until they are. If you call for hands four and the sets do not form all the way down because people are socializing, you do not start teaching, you just wait. Eventually, the dancers will start demanding the hands four - that's the best way, he says. Waiting is a good thing, because, after all, people are there partly to dance, and partly to socialize.

Chris Bischoff described his method of taking hands four this way: "Hands four, ladies and gentlemen. Hands four. Take hands four all the way down the set." Then he waits. Talks to the band, shuffles his cards, watches the crowd. Then, even though the sets have not yet formed all the way to the bottom, he begins the teaching. "And with your neighbor, balance and swing." The crowd at the bottom notices that the teaching has begun and that they have not yet taken hands four. They quickly hop to, get the sets formed and send the message up to the caller that they had not yet taken hands four. (As if he had not noticed.) Chris then says in his sweet honey voice, "Oh, I'm sorry. We seem to have started before everyone had taken hands four. Let's go back to original places and start again."

I like Chris' method for several reasons. It gives dancers time, but not too much time, no one berates anyone else, and it gets things started more quickly than they would otherwise. Over time, it tends to send the signal that you would be better off paying a bit more attention, because you learn that the caller is not going to wait forever to begin teaching.

We have a particular problem with this in St. Louis because our dance space, lovely as it is, is very echo-ey, and even a handful of people talking in the line makes it sound as if absolutely no one is paying attention. This can be disconcerting to callers, who can occasionally become quite huffy about it. And once you start complaining as a caller, your credibility plummets. So there just has to be another way.

Does anyone have any other ideas about how to get the sets formed? How much time is too much time to wait? How much is too little? Do you think a caller can affect (over time) how self-disciplined a dance community becomes?