strathspey@strathspey.org:27699

Adam Hughes

Re: Square dancing. Was: Contra dancing

Oct. 3, 2001, 5:54 p.m. (Message 27699, in reply to message 27696)

Lara Friedman-Shedlov wrote:

>  I'm baffled by this comment.  The whole point of cribs is to be 
> succinct and easy to understand (usually at the expense of some of the 
> fine details about the dance).  I never thought of them as having any 
> kind of mystique.

Lara, tell me your secret! Which wand do you wave so the people you know 
who have been dancing about 3 months have no trouble with cribs?

For a beginner, sorry I mean "new person", going to your first ball, you 
get given a wedge of paper that bears no relation to the words that your 
teacher has used, and you have no chance to ask questions of the author. 
  Can you imagine a new person at their first ball putting up their hand 
and asking the MC whether they should pass right or left shoulder on bar 
17?  And the response?

If I had a penny for each person I had to individually persuade at the 
club I dance in that a crib was not an instrument of torture, but was in 
fact "succinct and easy to understand", I'd have more than 20 pence... 
Some of them still don't think that.  Most of them are educated people. 
  Most of them are young (under 30).

Adam
Cambridge, UK