[Bg-dance] Backwards and forwards
Tim McDaniel
tmcd at panix.com
Mon Feb 25 17:13:16 PST 2013
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
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