The Jane Austen ball returned to San Jose on August 8th. This sold out once again; we had a few no-shows, but the hall was still comfortably full.
The dining room, where the refreshments are, is sufficiently comfortable that it’s hard to pry people out of there to start dancing again.
At 7:00, scheduled start time, we didn’t really have enough people for a fully satisfactory Sicilian circle, so I asked for a waltz, and with five minutes of that, enough people had come in to have a good “Haste to the Wedding” [even if we can’t trace those figures back before the Community Dances Manuals]. But I was behind schedule and wanted to hit the breaks on time and finish on time.
I should say, we had a bunch of repeat customers and people fairly familiar with the particular program, which I have run (with minor variations), five times in the last three years, and things in general worked well. Good turnout from South Bay Scottish dancers who were right on top of things. But we also had some first-timers of varying levels of ability, and also some youngish couples (I give up on guessing ages, but possibly under 30).
Also, I will stipulate that most of my dance selections are historically bogus, bad reconstructions, 20th and 21st-century inventions, etc, but are highly accessible without a workshop and still recognizably country dances.]
Waltz
Haste to the Wedding
[There were two teen girls or young women dancing together whom I have seen here before, and they were altogether baffled. Other dancers would get them progressed somehow. I had thought this was a no-fail sequence, but I was proven wrong.
A Trip to Richmond (Lass of Richmond Hill)
[Introducing longways, with room directions, 1s and 2s doing different things, etc, though none of those things is hard.]
[There was now, also, an older and a younger Asian woman dancing together, and they were fully, fully baffled and not really taking direction. They were 2s – they would lead up the middle together and then only one of them would go down the outside, so this sort of balled-up each minor set they were in. I was prompting for so long that we didn’t get to have James sing the words. By the time I gave up prompting I was concerned with the clock.]
Cinderella Waltz [No real issues.]
Congress of Vienna, no teaching. (I offered to give a quick intro at the break and that we’d repeat the dance in the third set. I did in fact get about 5 couples for that intro, but I don’t know how many of them survived to the end of the third set.)
Hit the break okay at 7:55.
I’d planned to start the second set with a Grand March but people were trickling in and we were not full, so I decided to interpolate my three-couple set reduction/simplification of “Flowers of Edinburgh” – it has the 1s chase->swap, repeat, and then a very simple progression.). Ran it six times through and we now had enough for the Grand March.
(I did short squiggles, and then platooning and had the lines of eight advance on the band and applaud; didn’t do my usual wind up the ball of twine. So somewhat abbreviated.)
Kaleidoscope Waltz (which I made a thorough hash of, through not carrying my notes out on the floor, imagining that I’d remember the dance because I’d written it. Anyway, back to the podium, got it sorted, started looking pretty good.)
Morgan Rattler (an Early American version with nothing hard about it and nice flow)
(And here I silently dropped “An Easy Competence” because there was no time to teach it, and we just had the music .)
Hit this break on time, and managed to get the last set started fairly timely.
Zorinsky (with a right-hand-turn-half box-the-gnat allemande, repeat with left-hand and swat-the-flea, which is still less confusing than pretzel allemande – and I just don’t like “overhead allemande” so don’t teach it. )
Bonus: Johnny Groat’s House (in my more-equal duple-minor reconfiguration of the 1772 triple minor that I put together for the plesiosaur ball last April.)
Duke of Kent’s Waltz (paid off the box-the-gnat / swat-the-flea) from Zorinsky.
Sir Roger de Coverley Each set had people who knew it so I had them teach their sets. The sets always get out of synch so its pointless to prompt. More out of synch than usual – the near one on my left was definitely walking it and taking their time; the near one on my right was starting the next sequence the moment everyone had gotten under the arch and not waiting for the start of a new phrase, and going hell-for-leather the rest of the time). Entertaining to watch.
Congress of Vienna.
(And finished at 10:28.)
These leaves out highlights like the unanticipated appearance of a camera drone hovering its way down the hall.
Anyway, people seemed to have fun, BAERS and Odd Fellows each made some money, and we’ll do it again.
— By Alan Winston
