I called half of a combined contra/ECD dance for experienced dancers last night. It went pretty well, although there were some issues in the last dance. I called the contras and Noralyn Parsons (no web presence) called the English Country Dances.

I was planning to start with a dance called Halliehurst by Gene Hubert, because it looked very smooth but had an interesting progression in the A1 section. However, we had a short line, I noticed two beginners sitting on the sidelines, and people were still coming in, so I switched to Solstice Special by Tony Parkes. I tried to cajole the beginners to join the line, but no luck. Without them, I probably could have called the dance with no walk thru, and for people coming in, it was a no walk thru dance.

After an ECD (sorry, I don’t remember the names of the dances), we did Batja’s Breakdown by Tom Hinds. It has a smooth sequence (at least from my perspective as a MWSD dancer) in B2: Swing Thru, Cast Off 3/4 into an Allemande Left. (In contra-ese, that’s Allemande Right 1/2, Gents Allemande Left 1/2, all Allemande Right 3/4, Trail Buddy Allemande Left.) However, a long-time contra dancer/caller noticed that the ladies use their right hands twice in a row (Allemande Right 1/2, pause while the gents turn half, and then another Allemande Right). In MWSD, that just wouldn’t be an issue; the lady’s right hand is available and there’s been a pause while the gents do something, so for us, we wouldn’t count it as two rights in a row. Now, what we would object to and contra dancers do routinely is a single-faced line bend the line to a ladies chain. Yuck.

I expected to only do two contras before the break, but there was room for another, so I threw in Halliehurst. People had a little bit of a problem with the initial progression (ladies allemande right 1/2, with neighbor allemande left 1/2, step ahead to new neighbor and swing). It was very fast, and some people got disoriented. Fortunately, the neighbor swing made it pretty self-correcting, at least for experienced dancers.

After the break, I called a hot hash square. It didn’t go as well as I’d hoped; even experienced contra dancers aren’t used to listening and responding quickly to “random” calls, even when they’ve done them a zillion times in contras. But they seemed to have fun, and I made it pretty short. The band (Gemma DeRagon and Della O’Keefe) had practiced a medley at a faster tempo than they’re used to playing, and the music was fun.

Then Noralyn called The Fandango, which was pretty complicated, but looked like fun (I started out in a 3-couple group, but then noticed another dancer sitting, and let her take my place).

We ended it up with Mary Cay’s Reel by David Kaynor (you can find a description in this .doc file. This was my biggest disaster; I had to stop the band and start over because the progression wasn’t clear. I had worked it out with checkers, but checkers dance in ways that people often don’t, so there were issues. One of the issues that I have with many contras, especially beckets, is that the dance descriptions don’t clearly describe the end effects. Also, since I just used checkers for four couples, I didn’t really see what was happening in the middle of the line during the progression. So, chalk it up to a learning experience; next time, I’ll know the trouble spot, and know that I need to make it clear during the walk thru. Other than that, it looked like a good dance, and people seemed to get into it.

All of the dances (except Solstice Special and the square) were beckets. Probably not a good idea, although I made a joke out of it (you know, I’m a square dancer and we like to start next to our partner…).

So, next up, FolkMADS on Saturday, with Merri Rudd and Steve Thornton.