pennsicdance: my comments on the Seicento Caroso ball

[Courtney Meredith]

Hi: on the whole I think it went OK, though there were some problems.

The Seicento Caroso ball was scheduled for 9-11 pm on Wednesday (against
Midnight Madness).  I think this was a good timeslot for it, since it is a
specialty session.  We started about half an hour late, and finished a bit
over an hour late.  (I felt guilty about keeping the musicians going so
late, but really wanted to have every dancer get a choice.)

Many thanks to our musicians: Rufina, John, Deonna, Udalrich, Allison, and
(two ladies who signed on post-Land Grab, whose names I've spaced).  We did
have some roadmap (repeat structure) problems - the musicians and I had
consulted before Pennsic and thought we were ok for this issue, and in some
cases, we were wrong.

On the playlist: usually when I do one of these things, I make notes on
which dances get chosen.  This time I didn't, so I don't have any stats to
report.  The published list had 18 items on it (or 21, if you count
Contrapasso as 3), and some of them didn't get chosen - there still aren't
very many 16th-c Italian dances that a lot of us know.  Predictably, Gracca
Amorosa and Spagnoletto got multiple picks.  I remember being mildly
surprised that no one asked for any version of Contrapasso.

I think we did pretty well on distributing participation, considering that
some of us know only a few dances in this repetoire, and only a few of us
are known to know many.  I *think* that everyone who wanted a choice got
one.  I did get a sense that people were making an effort to keep track of
and choose from the people who hadn't chosen yet.  I gave that a boost part
way through, and I apologize for being unable to think of a less intrusive
way to do it than asking for a show of hands.

The pace was very slow, as a lot of dances were preceeded by lengthy
conversations between chooser and partner: either negotiation for a dance
known to both, or a talk-through of the chosen dance.  This is probably
unavoidable given our collective knowlege at this time, and people seemed to
be patient and tolerant and supportive, but it still made the session drag.

My opinion is that though we're close, we don't quite have the collective
knowlege to make the Caroso-style format work well for a playlist composed
only of 16th-c Italian dances.  Maybe natural processes will take care of it
by next year ... but I'd like people to consider this proposal:

Next year, do a 16th-c Italian party in the 9pm-11pm timeslot against
Midnight Madness, but do it as normal format, with a predefined playlist.
Say 2 sets of 8 or 9 each, no dances *taught*, but about half given really
fast run-throughs.  I think this would (1) provide us a hit of concentrated
16th-c Italian, and (2) give us, collectively, a better sense of who knows
what, and which dances are most widely known.  Then try a Seicento Caroso
again, the year after that.

Please comment.

Mara

Meredith Courtney
Comverse