Blog Archives

Friday Flourish: Mirror Petronella Twirls

3/29/2012

This week's flourish is one we caught in a video from when Nor'easter played the Scout House earlier this year. It's a neat one where instead of both of you turning over your right shoulder to do a Petronella twirl, the follow gets spun the other way, over their left. It can be a little disorienting at first, but it's a neat variant.

This is also our 52nd video, which means we've been doing this once a week for a year -- thanks to all of you for tuning in! We plan to keep doing this for a bit longer, so please do send us your flourishes!

There are techno contra events this weekend in Bethlehem, PA; I believe there may be one in the Asheville area of NC; a Richmond, VA edition of Club Contras with Brian Hamshar calling and DJ Nu B spinning; and a regular edition of Club Contras in Greenwood, VA on April 1, called by Will Martin with Brian Hamshar spinning the tunes -- go check them out!

Happy Friday!

Carry on Dancing,

CS

Other Syncretists: Jay.J.Fresh and Misdivine

3/27/2012

In mid-March, opposite the South By Southwest music and technology festival in Austin, TX, the Couch By Couchwest virtual festival took place on the Internet, with contributors uploading their performances and festival "attendees" viewing the submissions on YouTube and similar. (They are still up, but "CXCW" has closed for 2012.) One such performance was by Canadian DJ Jay.J.Fresh and Australian folk singer Misdivine. The result mixed two nationalities, two styles, two genres, and two hemispheres -- all without the collaborators ever having met in person. They have done a few other collaborations which can be found on Misdivine's MySpace page, but this one has a video that tells the story in greater detail:

I'm certainly not the first person to highlight this video, and I won't pretend otherwise; but this does make me wonder a bit about distance-collaboration. Using recorded sound means that while you don't always have the immediacy of live performance (which, for some in the contra community, makes the idea a complete non-starter in that context), there is the possibility of doing "virtual tours," with a DJ in one part of the world potentially playing a gig in another part through videochat or similar -- or for that matter, having different members of an acoustic band be in different locales but play the same contra. I don't know if the technology is quite good enough yet to handle that kind of scale, but it's an interesting possibility (about which I haven't decided my opinion, yet).

What do you think?

Catching Up with Caller Jack Mitchell

3/25/2012

I first caught up with Jack Mitchell when he called a Contra Sonic installment in 2011. He mentioned that he had danced with Electric Camel Contra and called to dJ improper's sets before, though not with dJ improper himself there, and that he saw some interesting differences between the experiences--at which point I knew I had to talk to him for Contra Syncretist.

Friday Flourish: Alternative Promenade Twirl Out

3/23/2012

This week's flourish was pulled out on me a couple of weeks ago when I danced with a new partner. At Glen Echo we favor the "both hands up" promenade position, and this lends itself to a few nifty flourishes. Most commonly, it's a twirl out under the follow's left arm. This flourish leads from the lead's and follow's right arms and turns the follow under that way.

You, too, can have your flourishes featured! Drop us a line!

By the way, for those of you who are near Harrisburg, PA, it appears that there's a techno contra tonight (Friday) out your way with dJ improper spinning the tunes and Dave Colestock calling!

Happy Friday,

CS

Discovering New Music: Phase X

3/21/2012

In the interest of keeping my New Year’s resolution (and indulging my inner dance gypsy), I headed to Pennsylvania last weekend for a friend’s birthday party techno contra where the recently-formed duo Phase X (Ross Harriss and Christopher Jacoby of acoustic contra dance band Last Exit, among others) were wrapping up a mini-tour of Pennsylvania and New Jersey. I had heard good things from my local friends about their gigs the previous week, and so was excited to hear what could be done with a computer/synth and a saxophone.

Although the concept of live music mixed with prerecorded sounds invites comparison to Firecloud, I would say that that is where the comparison points end. Phase X draws from a really wide variety of sources in pop culture (movie scores are particularly notable) and adds not only the saxophone but coordinates a light show to go with the music’s phrasing. While I did find that I missed the sound of a fiddle a little (which is common to a lot of contra dance bands, acoustic or electronically-infused), the saxophone playing and the innovation behind the sources of the prerecorded music was epic and very eclectic (Pirates of the Caribbean’s theme, anyone? Eiffel 65’s “Blue?” Cascada’s “Evacuate the Dancefloor?” All in one afternoon?). Not bad for a couple of guys in tuxes and EL wire! While Phase X does still seem to be working out some rough points (the transitions between prerecorded tunes seemed a bit sudden at times at the gig I went to, and at times the saxophone got drowned out and I couldn’t tell whether that was intentional) but they do pack a rollicking good time and keep the energy in the room sky-high. They seem to have a really good hold on neat and interesting things to add to the crossover contra mix, and I am looking forward to watching them develop their sound further.

Friday Flourish: Long Lines Forward and Back Twirl

3/15/2012

This week's flourish is a take on one of the most basic moves in contra dance: the call of, "Long lines, forward and back!"

If you have a particularly enthusastic crowd you can get four spondees (i.e., eight accented beats) in a row from their feet. However, if that's not your cup of tea, there are ways to play during this move, one which being to give your partner (or neighbor) a somewhat gratuitous twirl.

Be careful not to wrench any shoulders, and be aware of the dancers around you, especially on the twirlee's other side -- this will break a connection there and some dancers place more importance on that connection than others. So, caveat emptor. If you're dancing with folks who enjoy a bit of unexpected variety (and a twirl or three), however, this can be a simple addition.

New Avenue for EDM Contra Outreach?

3/13/2012

One of the neatest workshops I have ever been to was a workshop led by Scott Higgs at the 2011 Dandelion Romp contra dance weekend at my alma mater. During this workshop, he had people assemble for a regular duple improper contra dance, and then had each dancer take turns closing their eyes through iterations of the dance to simulate being a visually-impaired dancer. The charge then to the other three in the minor set was to find ways to help the person with their eyes shut and for the dancer with their eyes closed to gain some empathy about what is helpful to dancers and what isn't (e.g., a hand to guide is fine; a yank isn't helpful).

I was talking to Penelope Weinberger, organizer of the Contra Sonic series, this past weekend (and I interviewed her -- watch this blog!) and she mentioned that people who were hearing-impaired still went to clubs and could dance to the vibrations coming through the floor. While trying to translate calls into ASL might prove problematic with ambient half-light in a techno contra, it does raise an interesting point. Traditional contra music, by and large, isn't terribly bass-heavy; the traditional music certainly has some, and there are members of the contra community who are hearing-impaired (not all of whom are older -- one of my regular dance partners for a while was hearing-impaired and he is now in his early 30s), but I wonder if this might be an avenue to explore. Could this be an avenue for outreach into the hearing-impaired community? Could a similar workshop to Scott's be designed to simulate being hearing-impaired to create a similar sort of empathy and similarly strengthen the contra community as a whole?

Thoughts are welcomed, especially from folks who know more about these issues than I do. (I don't pretend to have all the answers, and just because something makes logical sense to me doesn't mean that it works in the breach.)

Blogger's Soapbox: Order and Chaos and Contra Flourishes

3/11/2012

One of the things that tends to give contra flourishers a bad name is when they are, as one dancer once put it to me, "all flourish and no dance:" i.e., the dancer completely, utterly, and intentionally ignores the phrasing of the dance to the point that it interferes with other dancers' enjoyment. This is rather unfortunate, because it can be done otherwise, and in a way that only involves the dancers who consent to it. For me, to be perfectly honest, swinging the exact same way every single time through a dance, and having the exact same connection, the exact same relationship with everyone in the line seems disingenuous.

Friday Flourish: Mid-Swing Twirl

3/8/2012

This week's flourish incrementally increases the complexity of one of the first flourishes anyone learns -- twirling the follow out of a swing -- by moving it to the middle, rather than the end, of the swing. The trick here is getting your partner back in to finish off the swing. As with any flourish, make sure you've got room both in the choreography and on the dance floor when you try it.

You, too, can have your flourishes featured! Drop us a line!

For my readers in Massachusetts (especially the Boston area), you all should go to Sp4rk in the D4rk techno contra tomorrow night -- likewise, the Carolina folks should plan to attend the Cat in the Hat Technophoria dance, also tomorrow night! (And then you all need to tell me about them!)

Happy Friday! Next week there will be more syncretistic goodness!

CS

Crossover Contra, Copyright, and EDM: A Primer

3/7/2012

While many people (me included) attend both sorts of events, it is rather patently obvious that techno contras and traditional contras are somewhat different beasts. While there are general differences in ambiance and potentially in audience, the biggest and most obvious difference is the music: traditional contras generally have live bands playing music that either they composed/arranged themselves, or that has been passed down for generations through the folk process. Crossover contras frequently experiment with contra dancing to music that has been both recorded and possibly remixed. While some DJs work completely with their own material, frequently this involves using others’ intellectual property which, if created after 1923, probably has an interested copyright holder behind it.

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