[Bg-dance] Backwards and forwards

[Tim McDaniel]

On Sunday, we tried to do Parson's Farewell, but had a collision of
methods for the hey in the third chorus between Gwenllian and I,
Perronnelle, and Colin.

Unrelatedly, while trying to look up the phrase "Light dawns over
Marblehead" [*], I ran across this from the SCA Dance list of 2011 in
re the Goddesses in the Pattricke manuscript.  Take it away, Dafydd:

     The solution is even better for the hey, though I must admit that
     it is not my own interpretation but a brainstorm of [Gwommy,
     originally] ...  Lovelace's version of the dance is for "at least
     10" people, which means that 5 couples isn't a maximum but a
     minimum.  How, then, do you do a hey for five or more people in 16
     counts?

     The clue is in the instruction: "do the hey backwards and
     forwards".  Take this instruction, pair it with the pattern of the
     rest of the dance (going halfway around the other gender's line,
     circling first one way, and then the other), and the result is
     startlingly obvious: rather than trying to complete any form of
     hey in 16 counts, you weave in one direction (for the first man,
     that's down the set, or backwards) for 8 counts, about face
     regardless of where you have ended up, and weave for 8 counts back
     to your place.  Simple, right?

     As a further aid to this maneuver (which isn't quite as simple to
     do as it is to say/describe), each exchange, be it in two counts
     or four counts, should be complete - in other words, you are all
     the way around the person you are exchanging with even if you have
     to scurry to do so - so that when reversing course, there is
     minimal confusion as to who you are changing with next and where
     the line really is.  This isn't in the instructions or even
     absolutely necessary if your dancers seem to be able to make do
     without it, but if you decide to try this and run into trouble,
     maybe this aid will help.

Gwommy quoted that in
http://lists.andrew.cmu.edu/pipermail/sca-dance/2011-July/001768.html
and replied,

     It makes sense to me. This is how I started teaching the 3rd
     chorus to Parson's Farewell. Depending on the speed of the music,
     you may not have time to do all that Playford says. In which case,
     I tell people to follow the pattern for 16 counts and then stop
     and reverse it for the other 16 counts and you'll end up back in
     place (assuming you go back at the same speed).

And I replied that I had taken Gwommy's class at that KWDMS and picked
up the notion from him.  I suspect that I brought back that notion to
BG and tried to use it to resuscitate Parson's Farewell.

Danet Lincoln

[*] Stated to be slang from Boston, Marblehead being a point nearby.
Refers to a blockhead finally getting the point.
-- 
Tim McDaniel, tmcd at panix.com