I used to write pretty often….
Ralph Page gave this title to a regular column in his Northern Junket magazine, in which he shared information he had gleaned from looking through old newspapers in New Hampshire and Vermont. For those of us interested in dance history, he’s absolutely right. Late
A project that has been a big part of my life took a giant step forward today: we launched the Square Dance History Project’s digital library and website. This project, with financial support from organizations representing both traditional and modern square dancers, takes a
Two middle school dances within a week, no band, just me and my iPod at the Hulbert Outdoor Center, which hosts groups throughout the year. I’m a regular on the program for several of these schools, and it’s fun to return to the same
Folks interested in the history of contra dancing in New England and upstate New York in the post-World War II era may enjoy watching a series of six videos from this year’s Dance Flurry. I was the moderator, and I started out by commenting
Readers
here probably know of my fondness for the “chestnuts,”
those classic contra dances that have been at the core of the
traditional repertoire. Years ago, I wrote a piece, “So Why Are
They Called Chestnuts?” which was later included in the Cracking
Chestnuts book and which can be
found online.
The person responsible for that term entering our dance vocabulary
was Joan Pelton, who died
on February 15, 2012. She is someone who made a difference.
Today’s Doonesbury is a Flashback to an earlier strip, which reminds us that Zonker is well aware of the social benefits of square dancing. Enjoy!
I called last night at the BIDA dance
in Boston, my first time calling for this Sunday evening series about
which I’ve heard mny good things. It’s not that I’d been playing hard
to get, just that an invitation hadn’t come along before. I was
delighted to be invited, and even happier at the end of the evening.
BIDA is the acronym for Boston
Intergenerational Dance Advocates, an unwieldy name so you
readily understand why they go by their nickname. It’s a young
series, founded in 2008, and unlike some other new dance events, this
one had an intentional goal from the start. The organizers were
looking to fill a niche in the already very full Boston area dance
scene; they wanted to create “an organization which would
strengthen community ties and provide opportunities for dancers,
musicians, callers, and dance organizers to share knowledge and
energy between generations.” They’ve succeeded.
Musician Noah Van Norstrand is part of the Great Bear Trio with his brother, Andrew, and their mother. They play traditional tunes and they play some sets of original and untraditional material They also sponsor the Great Bear Groove, a lively dance event over
Someone on the SharedWeight discussion group mentioned that Charlottesville, VA, dance organizers had recently started asking callers to include a mixer in the first quarter of each evening’s program. This raised a small buzz of comments about the place of mixers in a program and, more generally, whether organizers should be telling callers what to do. Here, slightly edited, is my response (March 3, 2012).
I’m fascinated by this discussion about mixers. with most of the comments so far indicating that a) the authors don’t like ’em, b) they don’t use them, c) they don’t see the point, and d) dancers don’t like ’em.
This strikes me as another example of people liking what they are accustomed to. One of my caller mentors was Ted Sannella, who usually programmed a mixer as the third dance of an evening; Tony Parkes, also, I believe, puts one there for similar reasons. By this time, the caller can assume that the bulk of the dancers have arrived, and a mixer gives everyone a chance to see everyone else who’s there. Mixers come in all shapes– Sicilian circle, big circle / big set, scattered couples, lines of three… They are a systematic way of taking new couples clinging to each other and mixing them up. They give experienced helpful dancers a chance to learn who’s new, to note that person to ask later in the evening. They add choreographic variety to a program.
Contra dancers today see several hundred people at a gathering and think it’s a large crowd; callers of modern western square dancing, on the other hand, can speak from experience of calling for 700 squares at a time. In 1950, the city of Santa
What’s
in a dance program?
I
was struck once again, as I was planning my English country dance for
Sunday, at the number of variables that get juggled to make a good
program.
You
start out by knowing that you want some simpler dances at the start.
There’s always a good chance that there will be less experienced
dancers and maybe some—hooray!—who have never done this form of
dance before. Those simpler dances give folks a chance to learn some
of the basic terminology, which can be a confusing blur of jargon to
an outsider’s ear: “set and turn single,” crossover mirror
heys,” “half a double figure eight,” and so on.
The
other great thing about simpler dances is that the experienced
dancers can spend more time dancing and less feeling that they need
to help the newcomers.
One Sunday night about six months ago,
I was calling at a community dance an hour from home. Good band of
talented young musicians and a friendly crowd. We had some hard-core
contra dancers—one of whom left early on, perhaps because the first
few dances weren’t challenging enough for his taste—and some
absolute beginners, with a nice mix of ages. One young girl, maybe 4
or 5, apparently comes often; she was dancing with her dad and she
had clearly absorbed the most important things to know: keep smiling,
look at the people around you, keep moving, and hold out your hands.
Later in the evening, second dance after the break, we were down to
short sets, 7 or 8 couples in each. I looked at one line, saw a bunch of adults, and announced Money Musk, a tune
the band had been itching to play and a dance that I knew would be
familiar to many of those present at that time. No sooner had I had
announced the dance than I noticed a different young girl lined up in
another set.
It’s been a busy few days! Three very
different dance events, back to back:
English country dance weekend
I called at Sharpes
Assembly, an English country dance event held
two hours south of Orlando in a historic hotel in Sebring, Florida.
Does that name sound familiar? It’s the same town where where the
annual 12-hour car race is held. This event was a bit mellower. 😉 The venue was advertised as “old Florida,” and it was a lovely change from the Florida of neon and strip malls.
In addition to dance parties on Friday
and Saturday nights and the farewell dance on Sunday, I led one
workshop on dances
set to tunes by Turlough O’Carolan, the great
Irish harper of the 1700s, and another featuring contemporary
choreography, a nod to the many fine dances being composed these
days.
It was a mixed group of dancers,
including some with decades of experience and some who were quite
new. (I’m always amazed that someone new to an activity would sign up
for a full weekend of it… can’t tell whether this is a case of
“fools rush in” or a brave heart.) Fortunately, the
experienced dancers were helpful and the workshop programs included a
few more difficult dances that turned out well.
I
had the great pleasure of participating in a special dance evening on
Sunday. Dubbed “Ernie’s Favorites,” the program honored the
memory of the late Ernie Spence (1925–2011), a beloved dancer in
the Boston area.
For
many years a vice-principal of the Reading, MA, High School, Ernie
was a long-time dancer, going back to summers in the late 1940s
working at the Sargent Camp in the Monadnock region of New Hampshire.
He and his wife Joan became enthusiastic dancers, and they started
making regular trips from the Boston area on weekends to dance to the
calling of Duke Miller at his popular dance series in Fitzwilliam,
NH.
In
an interview for the “Paid To Eat Ice Cream” video, the
Spences recalled, “The phone would start ringing on Monday with
kids calling to reserve a space for the weekend.” Ernie and Joan
would fill up the back of their station wagon with eager students;
that’s how noted dance musician Peter Barnes and many others got
their first exposure to the world of traditional squares and contras.
Ernie
was a delight on the dance floor, a smooth and stylish dancer who
took gentlemanly care of his partners.
2010:
from a letter to a caller seeking advice on how to introduce her
dancers to triple minor contras
There
are several parts of Cracking
Chestnuts,
the book about older dances authored by David Smukler and me, that
will help you in introducing them to your dancers. David S. has an
excellent piece on “How To Call a Chestnut” and another on
“Triple Minor Mathematics,” both of which offer useful
tips. In addition to these general remarks, we talk about particular
difficult moments or special moments in each of the dances we
present, and you may find that those comments help you. The book is
available from the CDSS store.
The
biggest challenge is, of course, the progression, getting the 2s and
3s used to the notion of switching roles each time through the dance.
Callers Mary Devlin and Philippe
Callens encouraged dance communities to find a way of recognizing Ted
during a “Ted Sannella Memorial Week,” November 11 – 20, 2005, at
the time of the tenth anniversary of Ted’s death. This was my
response.
One way to celebrate his contributions
is simply by showcasing many of the different formations Ted utilized
in his choreography. In many ways, he was a staunch traditionalist,
avoiding using the term “half figure eight,” for example, since
it wasn’t part of the traditional contra lexicon. (He’d say
“cross through the couple above, then go down the outside.”) At
the same time, he was a wonderful innovator, drawing from Southern
squares (lady round two and the gent cut through) and from English
(his triplets were inspired by dancing Fandango at Pinewoods).
adapted
from a post in 2007
I
think that good music for contras consists of well-phrased melodies
backed by solid rhythm. I want the music to tell me what to do. If
the melody disappears into an endless fog of non-stop improvisation
and the beat similarly wanders off the rails, I have to resort
to—aagh!—counting to keep track of where I am in the dance. Not
good.
adapted from an e-mail to a fellow caller, 2005
Dancing with Dudley in the early to mid-1970s, I remember doing a lot of traditional material—that’s when I learned Rory O’More and Chorus Jig and Lady of the Lake and Sackett’s Harbor and Petronella and Lady Walpole’s Reel and Money Musk and other standards. Other material included some compositions by Ralph Page and then, toward the end of the 1970s, some new compositions started making the rounds, dances by Tony Parkes and by Ted Sannella. Sandy Bradley came through New England on several occasions with her lively personality and all these great western squares, which certainly got our attention.
Programs were much more relaxed through the 1970s… an individual dance would end and there might be five minutes of visiting and standing around before we lined up for the next dance, unlike today’s norm of dance dance dance.
adapted
from a post to the trad-dance-callers group, November 2004
From
time to time on discussion groups, someone inevitably will argue that
the solution to declining attendance is for the organizers to arrange
for more challenging dances. The best way to keep dancers interested,
so goes this train of thought, is to offer ever-increasing levels of
challenge to provide fresh stimulation.
2011, a response to a caller
> I haven’t even ventured into squares because I don’t know how to call them and don’t know where to learn.
For starters, Tony Parkes includes a helpful discussion of squares in his Contra Dance Calling text book.
Calling so-called “New England squares” is much the same as calling for a contra dance; figures fit the phrasing of a typical AABB tune. Ted Sannella’s two collections (Balance and Swing, Swing the Next) contain many examples of these style of dances, and the syllabi of the annual Ralph Page Dance Legacy Weekend, available online, are a valuable resource for more such dances.
adapted from several
posts over the years about how to bring newcomers into the dancing
Many dance communities
include a session beforehand explicitly aimed at newcomers. During this time
(half an hour or more in some locations), the usual pattern is to lead folks
through a series of figures to prepare them for the dances to come.
The argument is that
newbies need to know this information, and that a beginners session is the best
way for them to learn it. My own experience learning contras came in an era
when there were no beginners’ sessions, so that’s certainly influenced my
approach. I think the best way is for the caller to plan a program carefully,
introducing basic figures at the start of the evening and teaching more
complicated movements, such as a hey for four, when the beginners can be
assisted by more experienced dancers on the floor.
Here ’tis, as I step boldly into cutting-edge 1990s technology—no RSS feed, no Twitter account, no Facebook, but a website, long in coming. When I retired from teaching, I thought, "Well, now I’ll have some extra time. I can probably get a website up and running by the fall." That was more than eight years ago.
Friends had been telling me for ages, "You need to have a website."
"Why?"
"You need one to get more calling gigs."
"I don’t know if I want more than I have right now. The calendar’s pretty full already."
"Well, people need to be able to find you."
"Seems like people who want to reach me are able to do so just fine without one." (And so on… best not to attempt in print an approximation of my attempts at a thick accent as I slipped ever more deeply and cheerfully into my role as a North Country curmudgeon.)
You need to know that we don’t have a telephone machine or a microwave, and the one television screen in the house can be used only for playing movies on DVD.
Adapted from
a post in which someone argued that a dance series should stick to contra
dances and not bother with other formations.
> The
concern here is to attract and retain beginner dancers.
We’re in
agreement on this. Well [I equivocate], maybe not total. My concern is to make
the dance one where beginners will have a great time, and where the regular
mixed-ability dancers and the hard-core hot-shot dancers and the elegant
excellent dancers all have fun as well. If the beginners and the other dancers
have a great time and don’t come back, I still feel I’ve done my job. (If they
don’t have fun, then I share a large part of the blame.)
Adapted from a letter (1999) to a dance
organizer in another community; his organizing committee was hotly debating
what sort of dance should be encouraged
What is the vision of the series?
Let me add right away that this isn’t
just my question—it’s the one that was put forward by Larry Jennings over
several decades. (In fact, I think that pushing this question was one of
Larry’s most important contributions to the dance world; he obviously made it
part of my consciousness.
Some of the answers to the vision thing may come
as you and your committee discuss whether your aim is to build a community
dance or a so-called dance community.
Adapted from several posts and letters to caller friends
over the years
Bill Martin wrote:
> If a dance looks
like it will be a real party –
> “great music and huge crowds of enthusiastic
dancers” – I would pay to play!
Other musicians and callers have touched in recent postings
on their reasons for playing or calling. Some in the dance community are trying
to earn a livelihood from their work; for most of us, it is something we do on
the side.
Adapted
from a rec-folk-dancing post (1998) in response to a dancer who said that
callers should stay at the microphone rather than coming onto the floor to
demonstrate figures.
> The only figure that must be demonstrated is the courtesy turn.
That’s also the figure that’s hardest for new dancers to learn.
Hmm… it IS one of the figures
I demonstrate most often, partly to show an alternative to the twirls and
partly to demonstrate how folks can connect via eye contact to turn what might
otherwise seem a boring filler for the men into a fun figure for all.
The most common reason I jump down from the stage to demonstrate a
figure (which I do far more often than asking dancers on the floor to demo
something) is to make a point about styling.
adapted from an e-mail (2003) to an organizer dealing
with strident demands by a few dancers for more challenging dances
What you’re going through isn’t unique to your series. It’s
happened at most contra dance series with which I’m familiar, and for that
matter, a similar thing happened in the modern western square dance movement,
both in the early 1960s and again more recently. There seems to be a tendency
for a small group of active dancers—what Ralph Sweet once labeled the "overactive
10%"—to try to make things fit their own view of how dancing should be,
which leads to the gradual—or not-so-gradual—exclusion of just plain folks who
like to dance but perhaps not as often as the others.