Maia Calls Dances

As Carl Sagan once said: “if you wish to categorize and color-code your dances by difficulty, you must first invent the universe”. Or something like that.

Regardless of the accuracy of the above quote (which I cannot comment on), I can’t group my dances by difficulty, nor can I sort them into handy dandy color-coding based on said difficulty, until I have some idea of what actually makes up the “difficulty” (or lack thereof) or a dance.

I’ll discuss my actual difficulty categories in a subsequent post, but for now, I want to talk about all the things that go into the difficulty of a dance—because dance difficulty isn’t a simple and easily discernible linear scale, but rather a whacky n-dimensional coordinate space of characteristics that intersect in fascinating ways.

The N-Dimensional Coordinate Space of Dance Difficulty

While poking around for prior art on this subject, I came across a webpage that proposed a numerical formula for dance difficulty. Certain features of a dance were worth a certain number of points—one point each for common figures, more points for more obscure figures, points for leaving the minor set or for atypical progressions, etc.—and you summed up the total points, divided by a magic number, and the result told you the empirical difficulty of the dance (with higher results meaning a more difficult dance).

The method is a little clunky for everyday use, but I quite like the general idea, and have adapted it into my own thinking. There are features that make a dance easier, and (more often) there are features that make a dance harder. The more “hard” features a dance has, the trickier it is, and the further up in my difficulty ranking I’ll put it. A nonstandard-but-not-absurd progression could be quite doable on its own, as could a dance with some simple shadow interaction, but when both of these features come together in a single dance, it gets way harder. Here are some of the things I look at when assessing the difficulty of a dance.

Some number (probably < n) of relevant dimensions

Piece count: how many moves are there/how long do they last? “Butter” by Gene Hubert is relatively low piece count—with both a full hey and a balance and swing, there just aren’t that many moves for dancers to remember. Compare to Franklin Flank by Nils Fredland; there’s a lot going on, more for the caller to prompt, and more for the dancers to wrap their heads around. In general, lower piece count dances are easier, and higher piece count dances are more difficult. Add to that the fact that the highest piece counts tend to have shorter figures—6, 4, and 2 counts—which will tend to have unforgiving timing. What a great segue into…

Un/forgiving timing: how much do you have to hustle to get the figures done on time? The timing of contradance figures may be loose or tight: e.g. in eight counts, a dosido 1x is very comfortable; you can do a dosido 1.5x in that time, but you need to go fast and you might be a smidge late for the next move. Eight counts is a comfortable amount of time to circle left ¾, but to circle all the way in eight counts is tricky (though many dances require it). And an interrupted square through?? Forget about it. All the balances and pull-bys need to be right on time or else dancers will be late for the next move. (See also: a big list of figures, timing, and looseness/tightness thereof.)

Dances with tight timing are generally harder than those with looser timing—be wary of circle 1x (8), dosido 1.5x (8), right-shoulder-’round 1.5x (8)¹, etc. Dancers might feel rushed or confused and have a harder time slotting into the flow of the dance; in the worst case, people won’t complete the figure in the allotted time and be in the wrong place for the next move. As an example, Cary Ravitz’s “Autumn Air” is a lovely dance but has some pretty tight timing in the B2: two circle L ¾’s, which dancers are used to doing in 8 counts, plus a pass through (generally two counts). With experienced dancers who can intuit that they need to move faster than they think, this dance works beautifully; but with a beginner or intermediate crowd, folks are always late to the start of A1, and people enjoy themselves less because they’re not hitting the stride of the dance.²

On the flipside, if a dance’s timing is too loose, it can also cause problems. See e.g. Erik Weberg’s “Joyride”, which calls for 8 counts each for a right-shoulder-’round 1x, a mad robin, and a half poussette; contradancers may finish these figures in as little as 6 counts each, which will leave your hall in a variety of different places in the dance.

Complexity/obscurity of figures: do dancers have to wrap their heads around a whole new thing? In general, introducing complicated, obscure, or new-to-the-hall figures increases the difficulty of a dance. (Recall that what’s difficult for experienced dancers is not necessarily what’s difficult for new dancers! New folks have no preconceptions, and might be less troubled by certain moves (e.g. circle right, left-hand chain, etc.) than intermediate dancers.)

Recovery points: how easy is it to get back on track if something goes wrong? A dance with long lines, or with a nice long swing (esp. a partner swing) offer a chance to get back on track³; likewise, a dance with a gnarly A part can be softened by a very simple B that gives dancers a chance to catch their breath and re-orient: see e.g. “Twirly Minds Think Alike” (Tavi Merrill) or “Minimum Fuss, Maximum Fun” (Dean Snipes) as two good examples where a trickier A is eased by glossary figures and recovery time in the rest of the dance, making both of these sequences quite accessible to beginner-intermediate halls.

Blast radius (/leaving the minor set): how much do one dancer’s mistakes affect others in the line? If a partnership messes up the dosido before they balance and swing, no one is affected but the partnership; if they mess up a hey for four across, their whole hands-4 is affected; but if they mess up a hey for 4 along the sides, people out of their hands four (and possible the whole set) needs to deal with the fallout. Likewise, if someone messes up a brief jaunt outside the minor set and then immediately returns to their partner, the effect is relllatively localized—but if they mess up step 1 of a complicated 3-step lost-and-found dance, the effects ripple out. Generally, the more time dancers spend out of the minor set, the higher the blast radius of any potential mistake, and the more difficult it will be for the hall to recover from. See e.g. “3-33-33” (Steve Zakon-Anderson), with multiple passes along the side; if one of those passes gets messed up, it causes a backup down the entire line.

Physical connectedness: how much of the dance do you spend in contact with other dancers? In general, a higher degree of physical connectedness makes it harder to wander off, get lost, or mess up (and makes it easier for others to help you get back on track). This is why I sometimes teach my first hey of the evening with hands (i.e. pull-bys instead of shoulder passes). In general, the with-hands version of a move is less likely to break than the no-hands version. (If you’ve got a dance with lots of X-shoulder-‘rounds, for instance, you could change them to allemandes to decrease the difficulty level.) Physical connection also helps your dancers feel the beat together, so if you’ve got a hall that’s having trouble moving together, reach for connected and rhythmic dances (e.g. petronellas, long lines, wave balances).

The progression/getting turned around: how intuitive is the progression? In particular, does it involve turning around/looking in an unexpected direction, or require multiple moving parts? A chain+left-hand-star progression is second nature to experienced dancers, but it’s harder for beginners than we expect, because it involves looking away from the people you’re currently interacting with, and relies on your new neighbor also having gotten to the right place. Compare that to a more straightforward progression like passing through to new neighbors: everyone’s already facing the correct direction and can see who and where they’re headed to. For this reason, if I have a lot of beginners, I’ll often replace a chain-star progression with “circle left ¾, balance the ring, and pass through” (which has the added bonus of a) all moving together in the ring balance, and b) being very forgiving timing-wise, so there’s way less chance that the progression will go weird because someone arrived late.)

End effects: does it get totally wonky at the end of the line? How likely are the dancers to get confused, not be able to come back in, mess up others in the line when attempting to re-enter, etc.? As a rule, the further you stray from the minor set, the more weird end effects you’ll see. Weird formations or unintuitive progressions can also bite you here: e.g. in my dance Pink Martini, dancers need to reenter wrong (lark on the right/robin on the left) to line up correctly with new neighbors.

This list is incomplete

There are plenty more things that go into how easy or difficult a dance is, and these factors can look different for different crowds, or even different points in the evening. Still, as a general rule, the more of the “tricky” factors above appear in a dance, the harder it will be for the floor (though they may be mitigated by the presence of “easy” factors).

Stay tuned for a post on how I categorize my dances by difficulty, and how those classifications work in practice when I’m programming. But until then: what difficulty factors did I miss?