[Bg-dance] Argeers as taught at KWDMS

[Tim McDaniel]

Jamie, a young dance instructor, taught some advanced ECD at Known
World Dance and Music Symposium.  I thought I'd posted about his
differences from ours, but if so I can't find it.  My apologies if
this is repetitive.  My apologies if this is repetitive.  My apologies
if this is repetitive.

He started with holding hands with opposite, so I think it was 4 beats
to slip and 4 beats to turn.  The second time, what he omitted was the
slipping, so it was just double to meet and double to two-handed turn.
Looking at the facsimile at
http://www.pbm.com/~lindahl/playford_1651/065small.html , it does not
mention slipping the second time, but it does say "meet" both times,
so in his interpretation, he has the first "meet" as starting with
your opposite but the second "meet" as doubling to meet.  I don't like
two uses of the same word in the same verse meaning different things.

Casting: he did half casts each time, so they were half speed.  That's
one reading of Playford: he interprets "they" in the second cast as
meaning "the same people who led the cast last time".  But I dislike
the slow speed, and I think Star's redaction is reasonable, to
interpret "they" to mean "the other" and thereby move at normal (high)
speed.

"Funky hey" was far less funky.  He had the women advance a double and
retreat a double, so there's 8 beats gone.  Then the men only moved:
pass in the middle by the right shoulder, do a tight counter-loop (so
that'd be widdershins), pass again (I think by the right again),
counter-loop again.  So the men have to pass once and turn once in 4
beats, which is pretty fast ... which is what our funky hay does.  His
version *is* a more literal reading, but the usual counter is "why do
you call two people moving a 'S. Hey'?".

In the second time of sliding-glass doors, he specified men on the
inside.  I think we had a collision, but not involving me, hard as it
was to remember.

The final figure: quarter turn your opposite, which puts everyone in a
line with the women on the inside.  Then do a standard linear hay for
four.  He had us do it the whole way, so the music ended at the start
of our bow to the presence, and we ended with our opposites and at
least one couple was improper.  If you stop two exchanges early,
though, it turns out you end proper and with your partner, and you
have the last 4 beats of music to honor the presence.  Our version
matches Playford somewhat better because (unlike Jamie) we *do* do
"halfe the S. Hey", but his has some promise in being more natural.

Danet de Lyncoln
-- 
Tim McDaniel, tmcd at panix.com