Yes! Calling Party this week July 2

See you on Wednesday!

M
E

Flash Dance: The hatchlings spread their wings

Since Martha hasn't blogged about it yet, I'd like to report:

There wasn't an "official" caller at the flash dance last night. And since (wo)man does not live by waltz alone, the hatchlings stepped up (literally.) Each of us called a dance or two (I called the only one I know.) Martha pulled off The Levi Jackson Rag in spite of the claim by someone who shall remain unnamed that "that dance never works." Even with a fair number of first time dancers we were able to "leave one, pass one, get one" with style.

It wasn't a perfect venue -- doing a hey between those posts was a bit, er, intimate, but it came mighty close. Even the St. Louis weather cooperated.

Dale

No Calling Party June 25 - sort of

We didn't have a regular Calling Party on June 25 - Dale and Billy and I got together just to go over the basics. Since they're both musicians, figuring out where "1" and "5" are was easy-peasy, so we moved on to figuring out just where we might say what in order to get the dancers moving in time with the music. We used Gene Hubert's "The Nice Combination" for the project, writing down the moves in a special dance grid I got from some folks in Columbia MO, then writing down the calls in the preceding four counts, then using our notes to call the dance a bunch of times. At the end we compared what we came up with, with what I had used to call the dance at Childgrove. I liked the new things we came up with better, and have changed my card...

M
E

Hatchlings' dance

I really enjoyed the dance Sunday night. The dances went smoothly and the new dancers did well, too, so your instructions worked! (Sorry, Bob, I missed your dance.) Here's to the Hatchlings!

Calling Parties in June

We've had some terrific parties here these last few weeks. Enough of our wonderful dancer friends have been showing up each week to give us more than enough folks to fill the room (Note to self: make room bigger!), and we've had some fine wining, dining, dancing and conversation.

The universe continues to conspire not to let me do any English dancing, but I did have the pleasure of playing for Chrystal and Kay's English dances (and remind me, why did I buy all 14 Bare Necessities CDs? :-)). We did The Bishop to both its original (?) music (a lively jig called The Bishop) and to Miss Dolland's Delight (a more dignified and stately, if syncopated, march-like tune, which is suggested in Barnes for The Bishop). Interestingly, while I preferred the jig, the dancers seemed to prefer the other tune.

Last night Dale made his second debut, with cheers greeting his efforts. He'll be calling at the Childgrove dance with the rest of us on Sunday. Wahoo!

Here's the list we made up last night for this Sunday:

1. Broken Sixpence - Wade
2. Simplicity Star - Dale
3. Box the Gnat - David
4. Dosido and Face the Sides - Wade
5. Evil Duane - Joe
6. Boomerang - Martha
Waltz

Break

1. Chain the Swain - David
2. Eric's Second Date - Joe
3. XYZ or Symmetrical Force - Bob
4. Catch a Falling Star - Martha
5. Roll in the Hey - Bob
Waltz

M
E

Stories from Paula

Paula McFarling, one of our good caller friends from Columbia, MO, told me a couple of tales from the time she spent learning to call, and I thought they were well worth passing along to the rest of us.

Here's the first:

"I have been reading the hatchling blog periodically and really enjoy reading about all of you growing as callers. It was so scary for me at first! For several years our local dancers would rib me about the time I called long lines forward and back over and over until the music and dance matched again. But I didn't quit!"

Here's the second, about the Columbia Callers' Jams they held for a while:

"We started meeting in an apartment building’s meeting room and later met in our basement. There were 3 experienced callers who tried out unusual dances and moves. We invited any person who wanted to try calling or needed help or encouragement to call a dance or two. For music, we started with tapes but moved to having at least a fiddle player and usually several musicians. For awhile, our “slow jam” group of musicians was learning contra dance music and it was a perfect pairing. They were thrilled to try out tunes on dancers and needed practice in tempo and longevity.

The first year the Callers’ Jams were spontaneous and occurred every few months. Year 2 and 3 we had a schedule so people could plan on it and we met once a month. We had a flyer at the dances for each semester’s schedule. The first year we had a lot of dancers. Later, we had a core group of dancers who came, about 8-10 dancers. It’s great for new dancers because they learn more about how the music fits with the calls and the moves and helps them become better dancers. But an affair and a divorce and group fatigue all contributed to its demise. It was really a lot of fun!!

I had only been calling a few years so it was a huge help to me to figure out how to explain a move and then how to call it so the dancers would understand what I wanted. We had great dialogue between dancers and callers and musicians."

Sounds a bit like our Calling Parties, except for the part about the affair and the divorce. Don't think I didn't want to ask more about that! But I think I'll let it just hang in the air as a mysterious hint of intrigue.

M
E

Diabolical Dilemma

The dance last night (June 7, 2008) was a wonderful success. For a first dance of its kind, mixing (quel horreurs!) contra and English, with limited advance warning that it was even happening, an attendance of 33 people was Great News.

I watched the floor particularly during the English dances we did, to see how many dancers could comfortably fit on the Monday Club floor. It looked to me as if about 5 sets of four were just about right, and that 6 was still okay, but a tad crowded. We know that we could not fit 3 lines and still do the sweeping moves of English, so that means that the maximum number of people who could comfortably dance English there at one time is 48.

As it happens, the number of people needed to break even financially is 47.

And so the dilemma: fewer people, and the business plan doesn't work. More people, and the dance gets crowded.

We could do mostly contras, which pack together more comfortably, and suggest that each person sit out just one of the English dances. If there were 64 people, and four English dances, that would mean that, on average, 16 people would be sitting out each English dance, leaving just 48 to dance.

Well, let's just hope we can have this problem one day...

M
E

Dance!

Here's a link to the flyer for our dance this Saturday, June 7, 7:30 pm at the Monday Club: Hatchling Dance

It looks as if we have 3-4 English dances, 5-6 Contras, one Hybrid (Jefferson's Remorse) and one Dance in an Unusual Formation, the Levi Jackson Rag. I just found out tonight that the Levi Jackson Rag was commissioned by our very own John Ramsay. John's such a star...

We had a good time on Wednesday trying out all the dances - we changed out a couple we thought might have the potential for dancer confusion, so I think we've got a good program. I've made a first pass at putting them in order, and will send it around for comment tomorrow.

M
E

Calling Party Wednesday May 28 - Getting ready for three dances

Yes, Virginia, there is a calling party tonight.

We have three dances coming up to get ready for: the Youth Contra on Friday (May 30), the Hatchling Dance on June 7, and the Childgrove dance on June 22.

...time passes...

Great party tonight. John and Kathy from Cape Girardeau used some of their vacation time to stop by - they added a lot to the discussion. We all had a lot to hash over after our Kimmswick weekend, and we also watched the barn dance section of "Farmer Wants a Wife". Some pretty funny stuff in them there footage.

We danced a lot of contras - some a bit more complex than would work at a regular contra (or the Hatchling Dance) but lots of fun. We did just "Mage on a Cree" for English.

There were about 15-16 people tonight - far more than I expected on an "extra" night, and a smart, fun group. Sometimes I just think these Calling Parties are turning out better than I had any right to expect.

M
E

M
E

Kimmswick Weekend

Wow!

What a weekend for the Hatchlings!

Wade, Bob, Chrystal, Kay, David, Larry and Martha called during the weekend, as well as our good friends, experienced St Louis callers Mac, Deborah and Judy. We were also treated to calling by our Cape Girardeau cousins Kathy and John Coffmann, as well as the Gail Hintze and Michael Fuerst from Illinois, Jerome Grisanti from western Missouri, Jim Williams from Kansas, and David Kirchner from Minnesota. Dan from Illinois led a workshop on dances in unusual formations.

My lord, we learned a lot. We learned that, if you call a no-walkthrough medley, you should call each dance an even number of times (an odd number leaves someone out at the top). We found out that some dances just can't be danced in a crowded hall or one where people inevitably bunch up in one corner of the hall because you can't get across the set when you're closer than shoulder to shoulder. I'm not sure if we learned what to do about it, but we learned that some moves don't work too well on a slick floor, either.

On the whole, I was really proud of our contribution - in less than a year, six of the Hatchlings were good enough to provide a third of the callers at a great dance weekend.

Okay, one dance broke down but was recovered with aplomb without the band stopping at all. Quite a few times we hadn't planned how to get back to your partner to end the dance with a partner swing, and our communication with the bands about going out wasn't always, um, perfect, and we didn't always get the calls out before the moves, but honestly, even in the presence of other really excellent callers, we didn't look so bad! Of course, with such good dancers, all you really need to do is read the card right.

One set of calls went awry, but provided one of the most fun events of the weekend. The dancers, who had gotten the dance into muscle memory, refused to dance to the wrong calls, but instead started calling the dance themselves. The band was playing "Liza Jane", and the crowd was lustily singing the lyrics ("Going down to Cairo, goodbye, goodbye, Going down to Cairo, goodbye Liza Jane"), mixed in with the calls ("Swing!", "Long Lines!", "Hey!"). When the calls from the microphone converged with the calls from the floor, the crowd cheered mightily. We discussed how we could make something like that happen on purpose. Someone remembered that George Marshall sometimes gets dancers to call the moves while they're dancing. I'd love to find a way to do that.

The English with Contra Subtitles workshop went swimmingly. There were about fifty or so attendees, but I counted only seven from St. Louis! Either my count was wrong, or we have a lot more work to do to convince St. Louis contra dancers that English is a wonderful dance form - and part of the contra tradition. But the workshop surely proved that we have a shot at doing just that! Bob and Chrystal and Kay did a great job of getting everyone moving and enjoying the pleasures of sweeping moves done to joyful music. (The Tu'Penny Uprights: Kristin, Paul, and Martha, plus Pam from Cincinnati, played the music). We got a lot of positive feedback afterwards, and there were certainly a lot of smiling, laughing people who were cheering at the end of the workshop. So I'm counting it as a win.

I'm bone-weary from a weekend of little sleep and lots of paying attention, but so happy to have smart, talented and loving friends, and a FINE dance community. Bless you all.

M
E