Here is my thinking about our planning an evening of dances. I suggested that each one of us should come up with an entire program for an evening of dances. This by itself would be a good exercise for each of us, since it would get us all thinking about the nature of the dances we call. The discussion we had last night brought up some of the features we need to pay attention to: variety of figures, increase in complexity/difficulty/energy as the evening progresses, etc. If we can each construct a program for an entire evening (or even only half an evening), we can compare our lists and see if we have dances in common, see if the "flow" of the evening is the same for different lists. We haven't even discussed how we want to divvy up the calling: do we want to change callers after each dance, or do we each want to do 2 dances in a row? How will we decide who calls at what point of the evening?
So what I would like to do (and I will do it regardless of what we decide to do as a group!) is make a program for an evening of dances, listing the dances (6 per half, which is ambitious but do-able) and the "defining element" of each dance. For example, with the two dances I called last night, I would say the defining element of "Yankee Reel" is active down the center and up the outside, and that for "Don't Be Scared of Your Shadow" the defining element is balance wave/slide to partner swing (or allamande shadow to a wavy line).
However we do this, we should get on with our planning so that we've got something to work on fairly soon. The "Hatchling Dance" is a ways off still, but we've only got 5 regularly scheduled calling parties at our disposal before the event.
5 comments:
I think it is not at all too early to start planning for April 6. Perhaps the first thing we should do is find out how many people would like to call, and how many dances they'd like to call.
If we have, say, 12 dances, then six people could call 2 dances each. If there are some people who would like to call just one, that means more people can call. I'm assuming you'd like to do two, Wade, and I would, too. So that's four dances. Once we know who would like to call how much, we can discuss how to create the best dance experience.
I'm thinking we each might like to do an easy dance (for success) and a harder one (for the stretch). If we do them back to back, that would not quite be like a typical evening.
However, I'm pretty sure that not many people are aware of the Tony Parkes chart and that they'd probably be happy with whatever we did so long as it wasn't overly strange. The novelty of watching new callers attempt a high-wire act will probably be enough to keep the excitement level up, so if there were a few extra easy dances here and there, it would be fine.
I will also attempt putting together a list, though I confess I don't think I know enough dances to do a good job.
M
E
I'm completely in the "dont know enough dances" boat. I dont even think I could plan half an evening considering my repertiore currently consists of 2 dances. And I just picked one new one to learn. I feel a bit useless in this dept.
Ok...supplement to the above. I suppose I could in theory look at a dance book/website and find a series of dances that look like they would follow in a logical order for an evening of dancing, but I dont see how that would be a productive venture as I probably have never danced them and dont know if they work--not to mention if I would even want to call or be able to call them.
Fair enough. But there are things we can do before we know whole dances. We can make a list, mental or otherwise, of characteristics of dances that might be too hard for the early part of the evening, and vice versa.
For instance, dances that require you to leave your little group of four before the end of one time through the dance might be considered too difficult to start an evening with. Heys are usually considered tough, and contra corners are considered ultra tough. So "Dancing Sailors", which has contra corners followed by a diagonal hey, would probably not be the best choice for slot #1.
I believe that circles, allemandes and do-si-dos are considered easy, so dances which featured only those moves would be good for the very first couple of dances but would probably bore the intermediate and advanced dancers another time in the evening.
You must have a rough idea of which moves would be easy and hard for us to dance and/or call. That's the beginning of programming!
M
E
Among things to consider in choosing dances for early in the program, it occurred to me that one should be careful about including both partner and neighbor swings in the dances if possible. My reasoning for this is that if you have new dancers paired with experienced dancers, you want them to get accustomed to a proper swing early on (i.e. with the lady ending on the right side!), and if they are paired with another new dancer, you want to make sure that they are getting proper swings on occasion from their neighbors. I partially broke this "rule" last night by calling an somewhat uneven dance for the second dance in the evening, but I had mistakenly thought (MY mistake) that I was calling dances 3&4, not 2&3.
Wade
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