strathspey@strathspey.org:24448

Martin.Sheffield

out-of-sync figures (was Red House)

Jan. 22, 2001, 11:46 a.m. (Message 24448)

Anselm wrote:
>
>Dancers are conditioned to expect that a dance figure will finish when
>an 8-bar phrase finishes (or should be, anyway), and to carry on dancing
>in spite of this can be difficult.

I don't think that "carrying on" is a problem, rather it is knowng when to
stop that can be hard, when figure and music lengths do not coincide. 
In "Quarries jig" for example, if you're not concentrating, it's easy to go
on trying to dance the triangular chain beyond the allotted 12 bars, since
the figure ends in mid phrase. Similarly, with "dance to each corner and
set" type figs that take 12 bars. 
Devisers would help dancers by putting the beginning of a12-bar fig on bar
5, in order to allow them to finish the fig on bar 16.

The Red House discussion must have been of purely academic interest; no-one
ever dances that dull old dance, do they?
Martin,
 in Grenoble, France.

 http://perso.wanadoo.fr/scots.in.france/scd.htm     
                  (dance groups,  some new dances ...)