Dance ramblings...

Great music/dance titles is one of the best things about English Country dancing. During the past few weeks at our weekly Monday night English dances at the Gainesville Dance & Music Association (GDMA), we've done Dr. Vincent's Delight, The Astonished Archaeologist, Bonnie Cockoo, Christmas at Zeist, Barbarini's Tambourine, Picking Up Sticks, Jovial Beggars, A Retiring Fellow, Trip to the Manors, Mayfair, Winter Solstice, Wibsey Roundabout, Childgrove, Smithy Hill, Jack's Maggot, and dozens of others. Don't you just love those names?? If you're waltzing, then you can dance to any music that's in 3/4 time. Same for latin dances, or pretty much any ballroom dance--if the beat is right, you can do the dance. But in ECD, each dance has its own tune. So when you hear the band practicing, you know what dance is coming up. Some dances have been written to fit established tunes; for instance, Bonnie Cuckoo is done to an old Scottish classic called Shebeg Shemore. And there's such a wide range of music for ECD!! Hauntingly beautiful waltz-time tunes like Turn of the Tide or Elizabeth, rowdy tunes like Jack's Health or Liliburlero, dramatic tunes like Mary K or Companions, cute mind-worm tunes like Benjamin's Birthday, and dances done to classic tunes like Good Man of Cambridge which is done to Mozart's Rondo Alla Turka.

OK, that's enough rambling on. If any of these songs sound intriguing to you, email me at rthorp@aclib.us and I'll send you the audio. And if you're interested in maybe coming to dance with us, I'll be glad to tell you more. We dance every Monday from 7:00 'til 10:00 at GDMA, 308 W. University Ave. It's right next door to the Seagle Building, upstairs in the old Firestone Building. "But I don't know how to do it!" you say. These are called dances--the caller walks everyone through the dance a couple of times before dance starts, and continues to prompt the first few times through. "I don't know the footwork" ECD has no footwork, just a smooth walking step. Literally, if you can walk you can do ECD. "I don't have a partner" Doesn't matter. ECD has no ballroom hold, and the men's and women's steps are pretty much identical. If there are more men than women, then a man dances the woman's part. It's no big deal at all; it usually means nothing more than standing in a different place. "I'll look silly" No you won't--well, no sillier than you normally look. ;>) Put that ego in check--everyone won't be watching you, they'll be dancing and enjoying themselves. And we were all newcomers at one time, so we're very understanding.

Think about it!!

Thing 7--it just won't die!

The Generator Blog is like alcohol; no nutritional value, but once you start... There's all kinds of fun, totally useless stuff you can do there!

Thing 7 redux

Is it really wasting time, if yer havin' fun? Image Chef has lolcats!!! So now I have a dancin' lolkitteh of my very own! Kewl!

Thing 7!

OK, this is pretty fun! I used BigHugeLabs Motivational Poster generator, and only had a couple of hiccups. Setting the color for the letters and the background was way different than what I expected. I thought it would be like Outlook, where you get a bunch of little colored squares, and you pick one. Nope! BigHugeLabs uses this cool color wheel, so instead of discreet color selections, you have a continuum of all colors. It really is fun (even if you're color-blind like me!) You can pull your photo from pretty much anyplace you want. This one is from my work computer, but you could just as easily get something from Flickr. This is Annette at the John C. Campbell Folk School, in Brasstown, North Carolina. We went to a weekend of English Country Dance there last May, and plan to go again this year. While we were there dancing, there were also people taking classes in photography, beekeeping, blacksmithing, bark-basket-making, ceramics, wood-turning, kaleidoscope-making, quilting, and more stuff that I can't remember right now. It's a WAY cool place, and if you're ever in the very western-most tip of NC, you should check it out. Or go to www.folkschool.org and read about it.

Thing 6!!!

This one was so evil I thought it should be Thing 666! I never would have figured it out without the help of the "My 23 Personalities" blog. She told me exactly how to make it work--thank you so much! I wish it hadn't lined up the letters vertically, but at least they're there. "Dance or Die!" Bwa ha ha ha!!!

OK, I see that Thing 11 is now posted, but since I now have Thing 6 completed, I'm MORE than halfway caught up! For me, this is just amazing! I couldn't have done it without the help of so many people; I'd like to thank the Academy, my hairdresser (she's just fabulous!), and most of all my Key Grip, without whom I'd never have been able to grip all those keys so well. The rest of you know who you are; go have a beer on me. Well, not actually on me...

Video Bar!

Hey, I added a video bar! When I first saw the name of the gadget, I thought it might be a place to get a virtual glass of wine -- oh well. Anyway, these are videos of actual English Country Dances! I'm not sure if they change periodically, or if these four will always be the ones presented. **LATE BREAKING NEWS!! IT APPEARS THAT THE SAME 4 VIDEOS ARE STILL HERE (THE NEXT DAY), BUT THEIR ORDER HAS BEEN SCRAMBLED! OMG, WHATEVER SHALL WE DO?!? Just so you aren't forever cornfused, "Jack's Health is the one where the people are on the floor below and have a certain ant-like quality, the BBC Pride & Prejudice clip is the one where everyone is elaborately dressed buts dances like they have a stick up their hoo-hah, and Prince William is the one with just 6 people. The one with the weird little kids is the one with the weird little kids. OK, got it? Good! END OF LATE-BREAKING NEWS; NOW BACK TO OUR REGULAR PROGRAMMING!!** **OK, still later-breaking news!! The videos displayed are totally out of control! "Prince William" has totally vanished, and has been replaced by the Germantown Country Dancers! (Which is actually a much better video, but who knows how long it will last??) Who is in control here? Everybody, check the basement for pods!!!**I didn't get to select them; they're just the ones that came up. But the first one is of "Jack's Health," one of Annette's and my favorite dances. It was filmed at The Ark dance studio, which is on the Duke University campus in Durham, NC. We danced there last year, and are planning to go again in just a few weeks for their annual Sun Assembly Ball. The second clip is the famous dance "Mr. Beveridge's Maggot" from the BBC version of Pride & Prejudice. The actual dance is nothing like this presentation; it was totally re-written to give Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy time for some dialog. Our friend Veronica Lane, of the band Full Circle, deconstructed the dance as it's presented here, and we learned it and danced it at a presentation for the Jane Austen Society in Jacksonville. It was great fun! The third dance is "Prince William," which is danced as a three-couple set. The other two are Longways sets "for as many as will" -- the only limit to the number of people who can dance is the size of the hall. The thing at the bottom, with the little kids, is a puzzlement; I don't know why it's here. But then again, I'm not sure why I'm here either!

Thing 5!

This one might have been the most fun so far, and the most frustrating. Signing up for a Flickr account means signing up for Yahoo, which means jumping through hoops and setting up an email account that I didn't want and won't use. If I had it to do over again, I'd probably use Picassa on Google instead, since I already had to set up an account there to do 23 Things in the first place. But now that it's all done, I'm glad I have the Flickr thing. I haven't explored too much yet, but I want to search on the 23things@neflin tag and see what others have posted. Flickr will be a good place to back up my photos, but I have thousands! By the time they're all uploaded, I'll be so old I'll just be sittin' in a corner drooling on myself. And I already have accounts with passwords that I can't remember all over the place. Oh well; getting old beats the alternative!

StCroix09 026

StCroix09 026, originally uploaded by RandyECD.

The official bird of St. Croix, the bananaquit. They have a cool little squeaky song. They're also known as sugar birds, because they'll come feed at a dish of sugar water. They aren't very shy; this one sat still for his picture, right outside the door to our condo.

StCroix09 044

StCroix09 044, originally uploaded by RandyECD.

This is the view of the Caribbean from the dance tent.

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StCroix09 042, originally uploaded by RandyECD.

The dance tent at Sugar Beach (the resort where the dance week was held). We danced here every morning from 9:00 - 10:30, and every night from 8:00 - 11:00. The week after I took this, the tent blew away!!

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StCroix09 358, originally uploaded by RandyECD.

Annette and I went to St. Croix for a week of English Country dancing. This is the north coast of the island, taken right beside the road.

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SandhillJan09 058, originally uploaded by RandyECD.

This year there are record numbers of Sandhill Cranes wintering at Payne's Prairie. One of the biggest flocks was feeding beside the La Chua Trail.

SnowBall2007

SnowBall2007, originally uploaded by RandyECD.

Randy & Annette dancing at SnowBall in 2007. It's held each year at the Gulfport Casino Ballroom, which is right on the bay east of St. Pete.

Thing 4 done -- Finally!

Wow, it's been so long since I did anything with this! I took about a week and a half off, and since I got back I've just been trying to catch up on work. No time for fun stuff like 23 Things! But now I feel like playing for a while. (He says, like that isn't always the case!)

OK, I watched the cute little video about RSS, and really liked it. Un-technical and easy to understand. I added some of the other 23 Thingers' blogs to my list, along with a couple of English Country Dance sites. One thing I don't really understand is why it matters whether or not a site has the RSS symbol on it. If it doesn't, you just copy and paste the URL and add it to your subscription list. So why do you care if it's there or not?

The transition from Thing 3 to Thing 4 was good; first you learn how to search for blogs, and then you have a reason to do so. That's pretty cool.

This is going to be a short post; I need to make some progress toward Thing 5, so I'm going to go and start that. And I really want to get to some of the photo Things! I have some pretty good shots of things I'd like to share. Onward!! (Into the Valley of Death rode the 23 Thingers!)

Thing 3--Done!!

Well, the thing I notice about searching for blogs is how different the results are for different engines, and how some of results are not exactly intuitive for me--I had a little trouble following the hits in the results list to the actual blog, and sometimes trouble finding why the blog showed up on my hit list. But once I became more familiar with how things work, it was a lot easier.

The other thing I noticed is how easy it is to disappear into WebWorld for a long time! I searched on English Country Dance -- of course!! -- and found audio clips and videos and dance descriptions and lots of information. And found that an hour had passed before I knew it!! I see now how people can just get lost in the blogosphere and forget to come back! I want to try some more of the blog search engines in the future, but for now, it's on to Thing 4!!

Keep on dancin'!!

Thing 2--Done!

Actually, I find I had already done most of Thing 2 before I even knew it. I liked the video--he sure has a lot of enthusiam for a guy with no ears!! :>)

At first I had trouble with the whole "2.0" thing; Web and Library both. I wanted it to be a concrete thing, instead of a squashy, evolving protoplasmic mass. But I see now that a concrete description of a changing entity isn't possible. By the time you describe it, it has morphed into something else. But at least I'm comfortable with the concept now.

Why am I doing 23 things? Partly so I can play on work time and not get into trouble! But mostly so I don't feel like the world is leaving me behind--or at least not quite so much. I'm 57 years old, and remember having a party-line telephone, and black-and-white TV with 2 channels, and having to go outside and physically rotate the two-story antenna mast to change channels. I had a semester of slide-rule class in college. My mother still has a dial phone on the wall, with the 50-foot tangled cord leading to the handset. I love her, but I don't want to BE her. So I'm trying to keep up, at least a little bit. I'm mostly looking forward to just knowing what people are talking about. I don't know how useful a lot of it will be to me, but I want to be open to the possibilities that are there for me.

Continuing the dance description

Hi again!

Back from the land of Evil Influenza--at least mostly--and ready to finish the explanation of the parts of the English Country Dance entitled "Juice of Barley."

The next term in the dance description is "back-to-back" with your partner. This is easy: back-to-back in English dance is the same thing as a do-si-do in a square dance. Face your partner, walk towards each other and pass by the right shoulder, then back up to pass by the left shoulder and return to your starting place. In a square dance there may be "flourishes" like spins as you pass, or holding your arms crossed , but in ECD these are frowned upon.

Then comes the two-hand turn. Reach across and take your partner's hands, man's hands below and supporting the woman's. Then just walk around each other, clockwise. Easy enough, right?

Then comes the half-figure-of-eight. Like all of these things, it takes lots longer to explain than to actually do. The two men are facing the two women. They cross through the space between the women (man #1 goes in front to prevent a collision) and loop back to their own side. The end result is just that the two men have traded places with each other.

Then the four dancers join hands in a ring and circle to the left one time around. This takes 8 steps and 8 beats of the music; on beat 1 everyone claps theirs hands together once.

Then the women do the same thing, which puts partners back across from each other. Another clap-and-circle, and one round of the dance is done!

But the dance goes on! Each couple finds that they've progressed and are now dancing with the next couple in the longways set! So you do all of the figures with them, and so on until the music stops.

BUT, what happens if you progress to the end of the line of couples and have no one to dance with?? Just wait one time through the dance, and the next couple will reach the end of the set. Dance with them, and you'll find that you and your partner move back up the longways set, progressing in the other direction!

What did all that stuff mean?

There's a lot of information in the "Juice of Barley" posting--stuff that tells you the dance formation, moves, etc.

Longways set: Imagine a line of men standing shoulder to shoulder. Now imagine a line of women standing shoulder to shoulder, parallel to the men and facing them. That's a longways set. Each man's partner is the woman facing him. It's also a proper set, because all the man are on one side and all the women are on the other.

Duple minor: This term just means that, within the longways set, the first two couples dance with each other, and the next two dance with each other, etc., down to the end of the line. Duple minor dances are progressive. This means that after you done the dance through one time, you find that you've moved down the longways set to the next couple. So you dance with them, then move on to the next couple, and so on.

Hands-four: This starts many many dances, although it's not actually a part of the dance. The first two couples in the longways set join hands to form a ring. The next two couples do the same, all the way to the end of the longways set. In a duple minor set, this shows you who you're dancing with first.

OK, it's time to go home. More to come later on!!

Thing 1--Done!!

OK, this wasn't too bad, except that my first post wasn't this one. Oh, well. Maybe I can figure out how to re-order them. I haven't done a profile or pictures yet, but at least the blog is created!! And already I'm learning things that are new to me. Cool!

Juice of Barley

This is a great English Country dance, from around 1690. Great music, easy to learn, fun to dance. It goes like this:

Juice of Barley
Duple Minor Longways Set

Couples face each other. Take hands four from the top of the set. Couple closest to head of the hall is Couple1, other couple is Couple2.

A1
Back-to-back w/partner

A2
Two-hand turn w/partner

B1
Men do a half figure eight through the women (Man1 leads). All clap and circle hands-four clockwise.

B2
Women do a half figure eight through the men (Woman1 leads). All clap and circle hands-four clockwise.

Duple minor?? What is THAT?? Hands four? Half figure eight? Well, it's all so simple that even I can do it, so you know you can!! Tune in to the next post, and I'll explain.