This week's flourish comes to us from a viewer out in the Inland Northwest by the name of Peggy Hamilton. It's a neat flourish if you time it right, but if you manage to miss the lead you're most likely not going to cause major damage as long as you don't then try to force it using the upper hand (still, be aware of sore shoulders, but if you lead the push from the follow's upper arm it shouldn't be an issue).

Thank you  to Betty and Keith Holman for letting us use their home's entryway as our set!

You, too can have your flourishes featured in 2012! Send them our way via this site's Contact page or end us a video on YouTube to user contrasyncretist!

This wraps up Contra Syncretist's new content for 2011, but we'll be back on Monday with more syncretistic goodies! Steve and I wish you a safe New Year's Eve and a wonderful 2012 in advance, complete with dancing and fun, traditional or otherwise.

Among the highlights coming up for us in the Glen Echo community are the Friday Night Dance tonight with Perpetual e-Motion and Bob Isaacs's calling; the FSGW New Year's Contra with Nor'easter and Gaye Fifer calling, and Double Apex playing the FSGW Sunday Dance with Janine Smith; next weekend, we're following John, Ed, Julie, and Brendan down to Tennessee, where their respective duos play for Chattaboogie with the Christie Burns Trio. Seth Tepfer and Vicki Herndon are calling Chattaboogie and it should be fabulous; hope to see and dance with several of you there!

Happy Friday,

CS

_"There's nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and open up a vein." -- Walter Smith

Many people take this time of year to not only be a festive period with tinsel and lit candles and gifts, but also a time to reflect on the waning of the year and its happenings.

When I was writing up Terra Price's interview the other week, I was reminded of a question I was asked in the beginning of this little project (that has since taken on a life of its own): the question of why I would want to observe -- and perhaps even celebrate -- the encroachment of electronic music and other traditions on our beloved contra dance. Oddly enough, what makes me love this hybrid form is in fact that encroachment.

_This week's flourishes (which are now fully uploaded after an unfortunate false start! Sorry about that! -CS 12/24/11) are a few simple variants on an allemande. It may seem like a fairly simple move, but there is room for some embellishments if you want.

_You, too, could have your flourishes featured! Contact me!

Happy Friday,

CS

_Pause

For many people, 'tis the season for parties and celebrating. Frequently, it is also a time of year where you're hurry-up-and-waiting for baked goods to bake, or there's down time while you're visiting family, or there's no work getting done at your desk job since people took time off. Or you've just finished your holiday shopping and you're kicking back with a congratulatory cup of a winter beverage and your technology fix of choice. Your local community's contra organizers are likely to be taking a well-deserved break before New Year's, so what's a 'Net-savvy contra dancer to do?

_If you've found something cool and contra-related while web surfing, please share with the rest of us! Happy Holidays to all!

_Spokane (WA) Folklore Society (SFS) board member Terra Price took one look at the now-famous "My Cool" video and said, "I want that!"

"Not only did crossover contra look fun, but nothing like that had been done in this area. I wanted to have the dance, not jut for entertainment but for honor. For once I wanted the Inland Northwest not to be a decade behind the times. Also, I believe that genre mixing is essential to the health of the arts. One only need look back at any number of royal families to see what too much tradition and exclusion lead to."

This week's flourish comes to us through Baltimore dancer Steve Gester, and comes in response to a reader request for some less twirly flourishes, or flourishes for when you're twirled out. It's really neat because it uses the momentum of the follow but doesn't channel it into a twirl and still keeps the flow of the dance.

You, too, could have your flourishes featured! Send them our way!

Next week, Contra Syncretist catches up with Spokane Folklore Society board member Terra Price, who was the mastermind behind Spokane, WA's Deca-dance masquerade techno contra.

Happy Friday,

CS

Erratum, 7:30 A.M.: Corrected the spelling of Steve Gester's name.

_Back in September when I talked to Julie Vallimont (of Nor'easter and Double Apex), I learned that the other half of Double Apex, Brendan Carey Block, had been performing his own experiments with techno music. Like any curious person of the digital age, I consulted Google to learn more. What I found was not only that Brendan, the 2000-2001 U.S. National Junior Scottish Fiddle Champion, had recently parted ways with contra bands Annalivia and Matching Orange to pursue other projects, but that one of those other projects was DJing under the moniker Matt Blackfield. Further, earlier this year, The Matt Blackfield
Project was released for digital download.

The Matt Blackfield Project is a rather eclectic blend of folk flavoring and evocative electronic techno. All of the tracks create lush soundscapes, and if I was more inclined as a visual artist, I might have been reaching for some paint and a canvas (and created very different pieces to suit each track's mood).

To wit: the collection opens with a watery, echoey rendition of "Fingal's Cave," which the liner notes tell us is an ancient Scottish march with some modern treatment. The addition of the enigmatic, echoey spoken-word passage from Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland made my inner literature geek smile and adds another dimension to the piece.

The sixth track, "Short Road, Long Journey," opens with a keyboard loop before introducing more mechanical effects and bells that sound a bit like a rushing crowd. It then shifts to a lower variant of the melody and then weaves a bunch of layers together before it fades out and leaves the distinct impression that the listener has just glimpsed a scene that will continue even
after it becomes inaudible.

My favorite track, however, is "Dark Field," which frankly to me sounds like a group of pixies decided to crash into the titular field and hold a rave; it opens with cricket-like noises and night sounds, then adds some sparse but reverberating keyboard and then a thumping beat and some steadier, higher-toned drums.

Interestingly, it isn't until relatively late in The Matt Blackfield Project's eleven tracks that we hear a lot of the fiddle playing for which Brendan has up until now been known. Both "Soda Springs" and "Leaving Lake Morey" are square (or nearly so) tunes that feature the fiddle heavily and remind me a bit of Perpetual e-Motion's work. For "Leaving Lake Morey," Brendan notes in the liner notes that it was composed "for [his] departure from the fantastic community at the lakeside Hulbert Outdoor Center" and the sense of farewell and longing in this piece is rather clear. "Soda Springs," on the other hand,
features some hot fiddle action with some equally hot guitar sounds and framed very well by a backing drum loop.  

While this is very much an electronic album, The Matt Blackfield Project still shows off Brendan's folkie roots (I was a bit surprised to figure out that about half the tunes are square, or exceedingly close to it) and provides for a foray into the full spectrum of the multidimensional, if somewhat disjointed, world this Project has created.

The Matt Blackfield Project is available for digital download at Brendan Carey Block's web site and is also streamable from his Facebook page and his Myspace.

Before I get to the Friday Flourish for today, I wanted to draw your attention to a post on caller and musician Jeff Kaufman's blog from earlier this week talking about a musician's POV when playing for a dance and how it differs from playing a concert, which I thought was especially interesting in light of my post from Wednesday about music's relationship to dancers from a dancer's POV. (For those of you who DJ crossover events, you might want to read that too, as I think there are some applicable tidbits to think about when planning set lists for a contra gig and it echoes some points  DJ Gaga made in Monday's article.)

Anyway, onward! This week's flourish takes the skaters' hold variant on a promenade that we discussed last week and pulls it into a swing variant. As one might expect, you can generate a lot of centrifugal force, so be prudent about doing this with people who have sore shoulders and the like.

You, too, could have your flourishes featured! Send them to me!

Also, as at least a couple of people have already found, Contra Syncretist is now feeding the blog posts to a Twitter account (@csyncretist) as well as the Facebook page.

Happy Friday!

Carry on Dancing,

CS

_A couple of weeks ago, Contra Syncretist talked to caller Ray Polhemus, who among other observations connected more "swingy," more flourishy dancing with the techno contra trend. Despite the inclusion of our Friday Flourishes, I'm not sure I see the same causal link between the two.

_Dennis Gagaoin (pronounced "GA-ga-win") was looking though Spokane, WA's Craigslist when he came across an ad looking for an event DJ. "What caught my attention was the emphasis on electronica music, which is what I am particularly fond of spinning," he explains. In fact, DJ Gaga used to host "Spintronica" on radio station KYRS. "Little did I know that it was for a contra dance until Terra Price contacted me about the details." The event in question was Spokane's Deca-dance, held on October 29 and called by Ray Polhemus. I had never even heard of a techno contra but the idea intrigued me, and when I researched it online and saw videos of techno contra events in other parts of the country, I was extremely excited to DJ the event. I thought it was a great concept and I knew I had to be a part of it."