| Dance Name | Author | Variants/comments | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Frederick Contra | Tom Hinds | |
| 2 | Simplicity Swing | Becky Hill | |
| 3 | You Can't Get There From Here | Carol Ormand | B2: Circle to wave, balance wave, walk forward |
| 4 | CDS Reel | Ted Sannella | Original version |
| 5 | Butter | Gene Hubert | |
| 6 | A Bevy of Butterflies | Bob Isaacs & Me | |
| Break | |||
| 7 | Poetry in Motion | Lisa Greenleaf | |
| 8 | Bound States | Me | |
| 9 | The Second Time Around | Jim Kitch | |
| 10 | Roll Eleven | Sue Rosen & Larry Jennings | |
| 11 | Catch a Falling Star | Melanie Axel-Lute | |
My first full evening. I'd asked for some programming advice from some friends, and afterwards sent them a full report on how things went. I've recovered the first half of that file:
The dance started out interestingly enough with the manager unable to get her key to work. After desperate calls and attempts to break the lock, someone with a working key opened the doors at 7:15, making the beginning a little rushed. The band/sound wasn't ready till about 8:10.
The beginner's session was large. About 20-30 people by the half- way point at 7:45. Talking to that many people in an active hall without a microphone was tricky. Other than that the session went as well as can be expected. I did end it by teaching the first dance (Frederick Contra) twice.
For the first dance I wound up doing Frederick Contra, choosing it in the end for the name. (My brother was there, it was his first contra, and his name's Fred.) With two more walkthroughs with everyone there, the dance worked pretty cleanly with over half beginners. For the second, I went with the easier dance (Simplicity Swing), which was saved because after the star left progression, you did a next-neighbor do-si-do which could be skipped.
With the hey coming up, I decided to re-arrange the program order, and instead jumped to You Can't Get There From Here. (It was a two-walkthrough night till the second half.) This one ran into some problems. Early on, I was missing the timing of some of the calls. But I was "saved" because the banjo player was also working the sound board on the side, and at that point, he'd turned up the musicians loud enough that they drowned out my voice. Thankfully one of the dancers up front mentioned it to me around the sixth time through the dance, and by moving to within an inch of the microphone I was able to fix it. As for You Can't Get There From Here, a number of people were late on the second circle left, and hence the wave and the progression.
After that I did CDS reel. No real problems except hands-four was a little shakey. The hey dance, Butter, went remarkably well. For the hey, I started out having a hands-four demonstrate it, and went from there.
Bevy of Butterflies was worse -- there were some beginner couples who instead of star promenading their partner went immediately into a swing, or wound up on the wrong side. At one point I had to go down to the floor and sort out the top five couples of one set that had broken down, setting them up for the next go-through of the dance and calling from the floor.
At least half the beginners stayed after the break. The break I probably let run too long by about five minutes, which caused some issues later on.
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