Feb. 26, 2018, 8:30 p.m. (Message 69478, in reply to message 69471)
Eric Ferguson wrote: > I propose that the RSCDS could ask one of its committees to act as "advice > centre" on how to resolve these unclear texts. Speaking entirely for myself and certainly not the RSCDS, I'd say that this is unlikely to happen, for at least two reasons: 1. As a rule, the Society doesn't deal with dances that haven't been published by the Society. This is not to say that the Society doesn't acknowledge that such dances exist and can be fun and/or instructive – it's just that it would open endless political cans of worms that the Society, on the whole, would prefer to remain closed. 2. There is a general tendency even within the Society to move towards less, rather than more, prescriptivism. As you know, I happen to be in charge of the committee that publishes RSCDS dance books (for another 9 months, anyway), and we have had extensive discussions over how to deal with the seemingly unavoidable ambiguities and omissions in our dance descriptions. We acknowledge that too much regulation tends to stifle the enjoyment of our dances, and that while there should be enough detail and clarity in RSCDS dance descriptions to enable people to figure out how to do a dance from the written word alone, in many cases if there is an ambiguity there are several ways to resolve that ambiguity that can coexist without causing immediate catastrophe, and we do not need to pounce on one particular method and declare that the only officially sanctioned one. Much of the bad reputation that the Society has in some circles (especially in Scotland) is less to do with its insistence that people strive for excellence in their dancing (which is not a Bad Thing) and more with a perceived notion that the Society is all about Right vs. Wrong. While people generally enjoy being right, it can really put a damper on the fun you're having if you're constantly being told that you're wrong, and so we would very much like for there to be less of that, please. Adding further detail to dance descriptions will clearly be helpful to some people, but to other people it will just afford more opportunities to be told that they're wrong, wrong, wrong, and this is not really something we would like to encourage. So whether you do a turn right hand or a petronella turn at the end of Arthur's Seat is a definite issue mostly if you're training a high-powered display team which is going to perform in front of a bunch of famous people who all learned Arthur's Seat from Jack McConachie himself. If, as it will be for most of us, you are not in that particular situation, and there is no RSCDS Technical Advisory Panel to take recourse to, then you listen to your teacher or MC and do whatever they tell you to do (it might be something in X's class today and something else at Y's social next week, but that is hardly the end of the world). If you yourself happen to be the teacher or MC, you pick one and/or tell people that there are two choices and let them pick one or try both (they have two tries after all). Huge deal. Having said that, if people would like to empanel a committee to pronounce on that sort of thing for non-RSCDS dances (assuming that the RSCDS TAP is there to take care of RSCDS dances), no power in the 'Verse can stop you from rolling your own (if you don't think you're qualified, try to find some qualified people and incentivise them suitably to take part). If your committee's rulings are reasonable then people – at least those people who are interested in committee rulings on details of dances – will probably accept them. And in most cases it's not as if anyone really knew better, anyway. Anselm (again, NOT speaking for the Society) -- Anselm Lingnau, Mainz, Germany ......................... xxxxxx@xxxxxxxxxx.xxx Never trust a computer you can't throw out a window. -- Steve Wozniak