21 August 2018 – New Haven

Still summer social dancing (and K&G tryouts).

The dances I taught were:

Dragonflies  –  (32 S 5 person)  –  Lataille
The Dancing Bees  –  (32 R 3)  –  Goldring
Slytherin House  –  (32 S 3)  –  Bk 52 (Ronald)
Rendez-vous à Vichy  –  (32 J 3)  – Paris Book (Latour)
The Aviator  –  (32 J 3)  –  Bk 52 (Fischer)
From Paper to Pearl  –  (32 S 3)  –  Collin

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Dragonflies:-  Every teacher has a small collection of back pocket 'go to' dances. No thinkum dinkum dances for those times when the standard repertoire doesn't fit the numbers, or you have a small time gap that needs filling quickly, or…

This is one of mine. For music I use Hamish Henderson's Refusal as recorded by Susie Petrov and her band Local Hero on her vinyl album 'Hold the Lass till I get her".

The Dancing Bees:- A simple easy early in the evening dance. Roy gold ring seems to have a knack for devising these.

Slytherin House:- Published in Book 52, written by a NY/NJ dancer/teacher, it is a dance with snake passes. It is well liked and is quickly becoming a favo()urite in the local area.The music (recorded by Jim Lindsay) is wonderful and certainly helps. (He even includes snatches of film score).

In fact, the album (RSCDS Book 52) is a great listening album of great dance music.  Simply put - Superb!! The book and the CD both rate a 98 or better - none of the dances or their music sets are boat anchors. Most are better than very very good and have excessive amounts of redeeming social value.

I predict that dances from this book is going to be fueling ball programs for a generation - watch how quickly these dances climb the ranks of Campbell's lists.

Rendez-vous à Vichy:- Antoine Rousseau programmed 3 dances from the Paris Book on his evening program at Pinewoods this summer. All Nice, and this is one of them. I like it. Thumbs Up. 👍

The Aviator:-  A Carola Fischer production. I have discussed it before. It is still a two thumbs up dance. The critical piece is the peel off turns - the dancers have to time those turns with their partner who is reeling. It is the reeler who 'controls' the rate of turn. It is when you and your partner are in constant contact and work at staying in sync that this dance blossoms into something special. It rewards every eery of energy expended. Still two thumbs up!! 👍 👍

From Paper to Pearl:- I have been looking at two of Gaye Collin's strathspeys for the Tea Dance program. This year this dance wins the award and makes it onto the program.

I admit, I do have an agenda here. Our band leader for 2019 is Sharlene Penman who will be visiting the NYC area from New Zealand so Sandra and I have been looking at New Zealand dances.