Workshops
Workshop Notes
NYSSMA Conference, Rochester, NY
Saturday, December 1, 10:15 - 11:30 am
Fostering Middle School Dance Mania
Dear NYSSMA Conferees,
Kudos to you who are working with middle school
children, and double kudos if you are dancing with
them. I have found that if middle school students
are resistant to this kind of dance, that resistance
is usually noisy but thin. The fact is, traditional dance
is a really wonderful activity for middle school children,
it helps them get past the self consciousness they suffer
as they begin the transition out of childhood.
Your homework is to go dancing. Here are some online
resources for finding dances in your area.
Rochester, NY
http://rochestercontra.com/
contra dance every Thursday night:
(Just go for an hour if you want!)
Unless otherwise noted all contras are held at
Covenant United Methodist
Church,
1124 Culver Road (corner of Parsells)
from 8 to 11 PM.
English country dances (1st and 3rd Sundays,
7:30 - 10 pm are at the Friends
Meeting House,
84 Scio St.
For other New York State areas I suggest you
start out by Googling, for example,
Albany contra dance
You can also get all information you need
for your local dances from the following two sites:
http://www.thedancegypsy.com/
This is my favorite site. It includes contra dances,
English country dances and more, all across the United States.
http://www.contradancelinks.com/
This is a resource of contra dance websites
Here are some notes on the dances we did:
Lucky Seven in the handout
In NEDM’s Chimes of Dunkirk collection
Mary Alice played for this. We often do this
to ‘The Coming Dawn’ from NEDM’s
‘Other Side of the Tracks’ CD. Try doing
it also to a hot reel like the first cut on
NEDM’s ‘Other Side of the Tracks’.
The grand right & left exercises: First all
promenade to determine inside/outside
gent/lady or moon/star roles. Then all
face partner. Ladies crouch while men
weave around circle, starting on the inside.
Then Men crouch and assist ladies as they
weave around: right hand for outside, left
hand assist for inside. Then all stand and
face center and do a stationary grand right
and left just with the arms, counting up to
seven. Repeat that, but this time stepping
in place (two steps per arm reach). Then
face partner and ‘repeat after me’ some
of the rules: ‘I will not turn around, I
will not go back…’ etc. Tell them that it
always takes seven times to get it right,
and make sure, when it doesn’t go right,
that they all go back to where they started
from (rather than trying to fix it in the middle
of the grand right and left figure).
The handout instructions are level I. Level II, which
we learned from contra dance caller Lisa Greenleaf,
simply replaces the waiting (at the end of the A2
music) with a partner dosido.
Sashay the Donut in the handout.
In NEDM’s Sashay the Donut collection
Use any reels for this. I like doing it to ‘Flying Tent’ in
NEDM’s ‘Other Side of the Tracks’ CD. If you use
this music for the dance note that you have to call pretty
strongly and rhythmically in the beginning to help the
dancers define the phrase, but later on the musical
phrasing gets much more clear and the dance goes great
with the music.
A great! dance for 4th grade and up.
Sometimes we do this with large circles of about
10 - 12 couples. The sashaying of these larger
groups takes longer than all of the B1, B2 music,
so we just wait, once the sashaying was finished, for the
nearest start of an 8 or 16 bar phrase. In the workshop
we did the dance with 7-8 couples in each set, in which
case the sashaying can be done in the time allotted by
the B1/B2 music, so that each time through the sequence
can start at the beginning of the A1 music.
First Night Quadrille in the handout.
In NEDM’s Listen to the Mockingbird collection.
A great dance for, say, 4th grade and up who have
a fair amount of dance experience.
Start by identifying the head and side couples,
and make sure everyone introduces themselves
to their partner as well as to their neighbor
(the one next to you in a square who is not
your partner).
Haste to the Wedding in the handout.
In NEDM’s Chimes of Dunkirk collection
We do this with 5th grade and up, it can also
work with 4th graders who have previous
dance experience. In the workshop we did
it as an ‘improper’ contradance: after the
sets take hands in lines of four from the top,
each of the #1 couples trades places with their
partners. However, you can also do it as a
gender-free dance. We do yet another version
at community dances: it is not only gender-free,
but both the #1 and #2 couples can do the dosido/
two hand turn in the B1.
Intersection Reel in the handout.
Use any hot reel for this, like ‘Brothery
Love’ track on NEDM’s ‘Sashay the
Donut’ CD. This is a GREAT dance
for high school students. Ideally you should
have 5-8 couples in each set (40 - 64 dancers total),
but it can also work for from 4-10 couples
in each set (32 - 80 dancers total). I call it
with a wireless microphone, and stand in the
middle to keep the dancers from sashaying
back across ‘no man’s land’ at the beginning
of B2 when they sashay to the bottom of their
new sets.. Of course I get out of the way for
the great quadruple sashay crossing in B1.
Note that that, because dancers on, say, the
traditional ‘gents’ side of the set, end up on the
traditional ‘ladys’ side of their new sets after the
grand quadruple sashay crossing, this is, by
definition, a gender free dance: it makes no
difference which side you are on.