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
7 comments:
Yes, I confess, I am guilty as charged with abandoning my post as sound guy and I did not turn up Martha's mic when it should have been turned up. In fact, she was loud enough to hear during the teaching phase, but during the calling of the dance it was challenging to hear her. In my defense (sort of), I'll point out that Ted has a very BIG voice, he projects it quite well, so that the gain on that mic was relatively low when Martha arrived at the mic. Nonetheless, microphone technique is very important, and with poor technique there is little to nothing that the lowly sound guy can do to save things. Despite the presence of up to 550 Watts of amplification power in our system, one should still PROJECT one's voice when using a microphone, and one must project that voice INTO the microphone, not past it, for good effect. By this, I mean that the barrel of the mic should essentially align with your mouth. Having a monitor for the caller helps with awareness of this, but its not essential.
Another thing I'll say is that the "potatoes" Martha got at the beginning of the tune seemed a little squirrely, and I think that it threw her a bit at the beginning of the dance, but it was taught well enough that it didn't cause any problem on the dance floor that I saw.
Hmmmm...
Question: could you hear me better during the, oh, first three times through the dance than you could after that?
Because I sort of stopped calling then, only mumbling a half-hearted "partner swing" or "ladies chain" from then on. I tried to be loud on the "LADIES! Allemande right once around, all the way around, PARTNER byth [sic]Left, GENTS byth Right" because that's where that dance can go horribly wrong.
Maybe I was quiet because I was being...subliminal. Maybe there was no problem with the sound at all.
I'm still going to try to find a microphone around here somewhere as a prop for us to practice with.
M
E
Why does that last Allemand Left get skipped so often? I would guess that about 75% of the time (or maybe more) people completely skipped that very last allemande--despite the fact that my left hand was up ready for the move. Most people just walked right past me leaving me staring up/down the set at my neighbor. I'm short but not THAT short. :D
Whoa...No kidding?
That last allemande takes eight counts, which is the same as the ladies' allemande right, the partner by the left and the gents by the left combined!
So people got so far behind in that little mess that they skipped the whole last allemande?
Did anyone else have that happen?
M
E
The January 12 is a Saturday dance, and since this is my first crack at it, I can't really open it up to open calling--sorry on that. I'm always willing to open a slot on a Sunday or at an Elsah dance.
Swing through: From a wave, everyone turn halfway by the right hand, then those who can (usually the centers) turn half by the left. You end in a wave. That's square dance parlance; you'll be able to translate it into contra and diagram it, Martha. The reason they say "those who can, turn half by the left" is that you can also do it in a LONG line of folks who are standing in a wave where there are no clear centers, and nearly everyone will be able to turn half by the left also. The folks on the end can't, but this way they don't get lost, either. They just stand there and the wave re-forms.
Thank you for the swing through definition Kay. I spent an hour or so blogging about the calling party, (Including the fact that you were the only person in the room that didnt give me the blink-blink response when I mentioned swing through) but when I hit Ctrl+A to change the font(can't I just leave good enough alone?) my little pinky finger just grazed the enter button and DANG--all gone. By the way, no Ctrl+Z in Blogger Land. I'll just have to re-type it--after I finish my homework. Maybe.
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