pennsicdance: ball suggestions

[Gene Schwartzman]

From: Greg Lindahl <lindahl at pbm.com>
>On Mon, Sep 16, 2002 at 11:21:48PM -0400, Gene Schwartzman wrote:
>
>> What concerns me, is not the dances themselves, but the dance
distribution
>> that tends to focus heavily on one form or another at the beginning
>
>It actually rotates evenly; you lumped 15th century Italian with 16th
>century Italian. As you've probably noticed, 15th century Italian has
>been taught for many years at Pennsic, and has a pretty large
>following. 16th century Italian is relatively new and is known to
>fewer dancers.

But to those people who just show up to the ball during Pennsic.. Italian is
Italian... and actually to me Italian is all Italian.. 15th C or 16th C..
and yes, you can take the high road, smug attitude about it, but the bottom
line is that the group of people I stood next too, were constantly groaning,
"not another Italian!" (and I wasn't one of them)

>And I don't count the dances during the break; they're
>intentionally more obscure dances.

Why?  Why intentionally exclude dancers that might want to dance? Why
intentionally be exclusive?  Why not do something that everyone can
participate in?

OK.. Ballo del Fiore is a nice dance.. I like the music, I like to dance it,
I like to see it danced.. but let me tell you, if it was intended to me a
'mixer' dance, it failed miserably.  If it was intended to me a 'clicky'
dance where only a small inner group of dancers danced amongst themselves,
then it succeeded majorly.  Yes, a few other dancers were plucked from the
crowd as the dance went on, but for most part, it was extremely exclusive
and extremely 'in crowd'ish... not something I am very proud of as a
dancer...  I'm not saying get rid of it.. on the contrary, I strongly
recommend we keep it, but we should also teach it in classes and use it as a
big mixer dance that would attract more dancers into the dance, not
eliminate them.

The second break was a galliard... why?  why not do something more mellow
and relaxing... a pavane would be nice.. it would get a lot of people who
otherwise wouldn't dance, onto the dance floor.  Bel Qui (sp?) would be
woderful for that time frame, especially if we had people singing the words
to it.  As a matter of fact, in terms of logistics, I would use Bel Qui
first break, and Ballo del Fiore at the second break...

the more I look at the sequence of the dances, the more the above pattern
seems to be more sensible in comparison to the speed and type of dances that
preceded (there's more that would need to be worked out, but it would be a
good start, IMHO).

Zhenya

-----------------
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Gene Schwartzman             USSF Level 7 Referee
e-mail: emagene at erols.com    NSCAA National Diploma