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.
Music was provided by Full
Circle, a talented duo from Jacksonville. Ted
Lane plays guitar and Veronica Lane plays flute, whistles, and
EWI—that’s electronic wind instrument, essentially a large recorder
/ synthesizer combination. Combined with looping, this enabled the
duo to create some lush arrangements, sometimes with string bass,
percussion, and even trumpet sounds. As with the contra duo Perpetual
e-Motion, Full Circle creates tracks as they play, and then continues
adding harmonies and different sounds. It’s a lot of work and they do
it smoothly.
Most of the dancers at the weekend were
older folks, and it was a treat to meet a trio of younger dancers,
the Mauney siblings—Jason, Jessica, and Jennifer. They’ve been
leading an English
country dance in Charlotte, NC, that attracts
mostly dancers age 25 and younger. In addition to exploring both
traditional and modern compositions, they’ve been having fun setting
existing compositions and their own dances to music from movie
soundtracks. As an example, on Saturday night, I had programmed A
Trip to Town’O, a simple Sicilian circle by Chris Sackett and Brooke
Friendly, which is set to a slip jig. After I taught the pattern and
prompted the dance to the usual tune, I handed the caller’s mic to
Jason. He walked us through the dance with the alternative music they
use for that same dance—”Extreme
Ways,” the theme from The Bourne
Identity. Techno-English? Not
quite, but it certainly was a different sound! I took Jason’s place
on the dance floor for that version; I enjoyed the brief taste and
was grateful that there are young dancers who love English country
dance and are able to have fun with it.
Homeschoolers’
Barn Dance
Monday
night, back home in New Hampshire, was a delightful dance of a
completely sort, a barn dance for some sixty homeschoolers. Most live
in the Northeast but a few came from as far as Pennsylvania and North
Carolina for a week of activities at the Hulbert
Outdoor Center
in Fairlee, VT. Talk about an enthusiastic group of dancers! We had
quite an age range (9–17) and an equally wide range of experience,
from some who had never done this sort of dancing before to a few who
instantly stood out as contra aficionados…. turns out they are
regular dancers at the Scout House in Concord, MA.
Calling for such a
diverse group can be a challenge, but these kids made it easy. They
were quick to find partners, quick to line up, attentive, friendly,
and helpful. The experienced contra dancers didn’t sneer at the
simple dances; instead, they assisted their neighbors and managed to
squeeze in an extra swing whenever possible. Late in the program, I
decided, “Go for it!” and prompted Waves of Tory, which
includes a dip and dive figure. I asked them to make sets of five
couples all approximately the same height; you can imagine the chaos
that could have ensued with 17-year-old guys trying to go under
arches of 9-year-olds! They got through the dance in superb fashion.
Many dancers get
pulled into ever-increasing complexity. We certainly saw that happen
with modern Western square dance, and the contra dance community is
not immune to the lure—witness the popularity of contra medleys,
where dancers don’t know what’s coming next and need to respond
instantly. I sometimes worry that we’re losing our grounding in the
basics, that the ever-more-cerebral dances take us away from our
roots of dancing as a powerful way for people to enjoy each other’s
company. Dance programs such as this one Monday night with the
kids—simple, high energy, full of laughter and fun—are a terrific
reminder of the joy that traditional dances bring to a community.
American and
French high school students
A local high school has a regular exchange with a school in France;
last spring the locals went to France, and this year the French kids
came here. I was invited to call again for the group, this time on
what was the final night of the exchange. The music, as the night
before, was the superb duo of Jane Orzechowski on fiddle and her son
Russell on piano. I’ve worked with them (and the other musicians in
the family—Francis, Sophie, and Neil) on numerous occasions and
they know what music I want for a particular dance well before I’ve
had a chance to tell them.
I’ve called for this event before. With the language challenge for
the French students, it’s important to pick dances that are simple to
teach so they are not confused by too many words. It’s also important
to pick dances that don’t seem too babyish; these are high school
students, not six-year-olds. Kids drifted in slowly, and we finally
decided to start when we had enough for a longways dance with just
seven couples—Dudley Laufman’s Low-Backed Car. That was a good
decision, because as others arrived they found the music going and
the lines dancing rapidly around each other. Instead of Dudley’s
usual tune, a jig, I asked for a lively reel, which turned the dance
into even higher energy.
The hard part was getting kids onto the dance floor. Some of the
French students were oh-so-cool, and the situation wasn’t helped by
American hosts being reluctant themselves. After twenty minutes or
so, in came a large group of girls, all wearing checked shirts, some
with cowboy hats. That increased the numbers and we started getting
better numbers. After five or six dances, I needed a break, so turned
on the iPod and out came the familiar strains of Cotton Eyed Joe. That got ’em up and moving! (For a very different and lovely take on that song, listen to Nina Simone sing it.)
There was a time, as recently as a few years ago, when I wouldn’t
dream of putting on a tune like that. I’ve come to appreciate that
giving kids something that’s familiar isn’t a sin, that I don’t have
to be such a purist. The idea is to help people have fun and yes,
country line dancing isn’t my main reason for being there. But if
that dance—or the Macarena, for that matter—helps loosen social
inhibitions and gets more people out on the dance floor, great! I can
use that energy, and once they’re on the floor for one number they’re
more likely to stay for another.
And
so it was. We did a square, including one set with all French kids in
it. No complicated break figures—again, I needed to be careful of
language difficulties—but they got it and had fun with it. We did
the fan dance, of course, a long line of girls and a long line of
boys, a great way to have fun picking a partner under the
oh-so-careful gaze of peers. My fiddler noted that a few of the very
cute French boys inevitably got picked.
I
turned back to the iPod and put on Cupid Shuffle. Now, this is even
more removed from traditional dance than Cotton Eyed Joe, and it
brought out nearly everybody, including some of the adults chaperones
at the event, parents and teachers. The kids had been dancing in lines across from each other, but they noticed that the adults were doing it the more common way, changing our orientation 90° each time through the dance, and they quickly joined us. The whole floor was moving in
unison, and those who weren’t dancing were busy taking photos and videos.
Last
dance of the evening? Le Brandy, with its “un, deux, trois,
poussez!” refrain, a dance from Quebec that I could call in
French, a perfect way to draw the cultural exchange to a close.
Oh,
and we finished with a waltz, which had a large number of kids on the
floor, some of whom actually knew how to do the dance.
All
in all, a lot of work but well worth it.