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.