Oct. 3, 2001, 3:10 a.m. (Message 27684)
Adam wrote: "Square dances are all called and they have a medal system which means you can't must sit out certain dances if you haven't got the medal!" Perhaps you are unaware that there are (at least) two forms of Square Dancing in the U.S.? *Traditional* square dancing consists of simple, very accessible figures, and is often coupled with contra dances. For example, in the Washington, D.C., area, in the mid-80s, the Friday and Sunday evening dances were "contras and squares." Squares have since fallen out of favor there and are, sadly, rarely done. *Western* square or *Club* square dancing sounds like the variety to which you refer. First a dancer must take a Basic Class, learning the basic 50 calls (which, as it turns out, are the very ones that constitute *traditional* square dancing: grand chain, ladies chain, forward and back, circle, right and left through, pass through, among others). Only after mastering these can a dancer move up to Plus Levels where increasing more complicated figures prevail. I don't recall whether one actually gets a certificate or medal, but as far as I know it is true that you can't just walk into a club dance and expect to join a square without some evidence that you can actually do the dances. Note that the figures listed above are those that we find, with some variation allowed for change across time and space, in ECD and SCD. Pat who moved from the D.C. area in 1998 and now does SCD in Charlottesville and Richmond regularly, ECD once a month in C'ville, and contra once a year (when an outstanding band comes to town)
Oct. 3, 2001, 2:03 p.m. (Message 27692, in reply to message 27684)
Thanks Pat. I didn't appreciate the difference. It sounds like here we get some "Traditional" square at our fortnightly contra evenings, and it is the "Western" Square dancers who get uptight about us not doing them right, much like some of the SCDers get when we dance Posties Jig twice through without stopping at a Ceilidh. The point was: Calling and writing cribs, listening to callers and reading cribs. They are two parallel sets of skills, and neither is harder than the other. America has lots of good callers, the UK has fewer, but cribs only need writing once well to still be valid. Both western square clubs and SCD clubs attach a mystique to reading these runes, which I think is daft. What can we do to make cribbing more accessible? Since the accepted method of learnig a dance for a SCD ball is by cribbing, should we be teaching cribbing in classes, as much as teaching by walk through? Has anyone any good resource for teaching people to read cribs? Adam Cambridge, UK.
Oct. 3, 2001, 4:26 p.m. (Message 27696, in reply to message 27692)
Quoting Adam Hughes <xxxxxxxxxxx@xxxxx.xx.xx>: > cribs only need writing once well to still be valid. Both western > square clubs and SCD > clubs attach a mystique to reading these runes, which I think is > daft. > 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 Friedman-Shedlov xxxx@xxxxxxx.xxx *******************************
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
Oct. 3, 2001, 6:56 p.m. (Message 27701, in reply to message 27684)
> 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). > I think there are two issues here: one is learning how to interpret the written instructions, the other is learning to read other people's short-hand. As far as learning to read the written instructions, what it takes is practice. In classes that were geared more towards beginners, I have occasionally given dancers "homework" of taking home a copy of a dance (a fairly simple dance), learning it on their own, and being prepared to dance it the next week. That way they have to look at the page, read the name of the figure, think to themselves what that ends up looking like on the dance floor, where it fits in the total context of the dance, etc. A whole bunch of skills get practiced. If the dance is relatively simple (note: give them a good chance to succeed), then it also provides an opportunity to talk about the different ways that dance instructions are written and how to get from the printed page to the dance floor. As for the short-hand used in some ball programs: there seem to be several used, with no very clear standard. Makes it a bit difficult to teach. But if someone were to bring me one they couldn't work out, I would be happy to help them with it (note this key phrase: without a standard, some of these cribs are as puzzling to teachers not from the area as to anyone else) and use the opportunity to expose the class to it. regards, Norah Link (Montreal, QC, Canada)
Oct. 3, 2001, 7:04 p.m. (Message 27702, in reply to message 27684)
> 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). P.S. Have you considered that it may also be necessary to redesign your cribs so they are easier to understand quickly? Norah Link (Montreal, QC)