Good party last night!
There were at least 13 of us, maybe more if someone was lurking in the kitchen when I counted - ten dancing, one calling, and a couple of people on the couch.
We each called dances we think will be good for the Youth Contra on Friday, and, serendipitously, we were able to make up a good program just from the dances each person chose - circle mixer, easier dances building up to harder ones, then backing off. I'm expecting surprises - either the dances we chose will be a little harder to teach than we thought, or the kids will learn them so fast we should have chosen more challenging dances. They're all reasonably easy and fun dances so we should be able to stick to the program, but I'm braced for a "learning experience".
People often tease me and suggest I ought to learn to call while I play the violin, so what the heck, I'm going to try it. It worked kind of okay at the calling party last night, though each part (the playing and the calling) suffered a bit. I'll let you know how it turns out. No promises, though, especially since I have to get up at 4:30am on Friday for a Blackthorn Morris appearance on St. Louis Today.
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The playing while calling thing didn't exactly work out. I'm not sure whether the bigger problem was trying to get the fiddle in place to play while continuing to call, or getting rattled when the band didn't quite play the right number of measures the first time through, or watching in fascinated horror as the group with the most experienced contra dancers struggled to make sense of the Englishy calls.
The problem seemed to come at the end of the dance, where you have to find your next partner and gypsy him/her. I'll want to work it out at a calling party. There seems to be something about the spacing. But jeesh, there are only three men and three women in each set. How far wrong could you go? Maybe I could just say "Women, step to the center. Turn around and gypsy the nearest guy."
Actually, now that I think about it, the step to the center is a strange move. I think that means we're just not doing it right yet. Maybe I could call Turning by Threes at a Waltz party, and suggest using a Waltz step (LEFT two three RIGHT two three). People seem confused by doing it as a kind of slow chasee (LEFT__together, RIGHT__together), and doing it as a single slow step doesn't quite do it for everyone, either (LEFT__ __, RIGHT __ __) because they don't let the weight go DOWN. It's always FORWARD, and of course, in this configuration, there's not much forward there. Maybe if I could get them to make the circle bigger after the stars.
I need some help on this.
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