Maia Calls Dances

I just finished putting together my program for Brooklyn Contra tomorrow [read: April 21, 2024 (I take a while to finish blog posts okay?!)], and figured I’d share my thought process. Here’s the framework I was working with, the constraints I set myself, and how it all developed into a full dance program.

Before the Dance

Initial Constraints

Brooklyn Contra is my home dance, so I generally have a good idea of my target difficulty level there. Today is a special case because a lot of our experienced dancers will be off at NEFFA (and it’s the day after 4/20, so some people might show up uh, still celebrating); so I’m going to aim for a slightly easier program than I’d normally call here, and leave myself the option of dropping the difficulty level even further if need be.

I call my dances shorter than many callers I know, so when everything is humming smoothly, I can fit up to 12 dances into a 3-hour evening (plus 2x waltzes and a 15m break). I usually plan for 6 dances in the first half, and 5-6 in the second half (I optimistically program 6, but have one specifically designated to be dropped if I’m running short on time).

One additional constraint is that I’ve got my friend Carter doing a guest spot; he’s already chosen his dance, and he’ll be calling third.

At this point, my program looks like this:

This is an intimidating amount of flexibility, so I want to somewhat constrain or guide my dance choice so I can actually, y’know, make choices. I tend to do this via some combination of:

1. pulling dances I’m actively excited about calling, and then keeping an eye out for places to slot those in
2. considering concepts or program niches I’m interested in hitting, and pulling dances that fulfill those
3. picking a single more complicated dance I’m excited about, slot it in, and then fill the slots before with dances that teach the moves and build the skills required

For this dance, I’m going for options 1 + 2. Specific things I know I want to do:

1. teach a full hey—but not until the second half, since we have a half hey in the first half (Carter’s dance) and maybe a slightly newbier crowd than normal. My full hey intro should still be fairly simple, but it's in the second half, so I can get away with adding a little interest (i.e. it can be a step above Butter in complexity)
2. get people out of the minor set at some point—but again, probably not in the first half, because I'm playing the first half extra safe
3. call my new dance, Emma's Emergency, written for Emma Azelborn when she was having a last-minute-workshop-planning emergency
4. maybe work in a 4x4 to add some variety (I try and throw in something a little novel every time I call Brooklyn Contra, because I want to broaden my home dance’s horizons and help build their skills)

Filling Out the Program

Things I Know I Want to Call

Thinking about the accessible 4x4s I have in my box: I called Coconut Cream Pie recently at BkC, and I don’t know if there’s enough room in the hall for the squared sets required for Dance All Night, so that leaves me with WarmUp. I want to keep it as easy as possible to compensate for a novel formation, so I’ll swap out the half-hey for a promenade, and make sure to call a promenade earlier in the evening to prep dancers.

This works out well because one of my go-to just-a-little-harder-than-Butter full hey dances is Wrinkled Ribbon, which has a J-hook promenade. So, great, let’s assume that both of those dances will go in the second half.

Emma’s Emergency has a half hey, so I don’t want it too close to 20 Below lest I overdo the half heys. It’s got some novel transitions that I hope make it interesting, but it’s still not too complicated. These two factors together point to putting it as the penultimate dance, when people’s brains are kind of fried. (I imagine the difficulty of the dance peaking at the beginning of the second half,¹ and declining from the 4th-ish dance of the second half to the end.)

As far as where to put the 4x4, it’s novel but not actually that hard (assuming I can explain the formation/directionality right); let’s put it towards the back of the second half, and save those prime 2nd and 3rd dances after the break for more challenging material. With that in mind, and spacing out Wrinkled Ribbon and Emma’s Emergency to not have too much hey-ing at once, our second half might look like this:

Let’s leave this for now and turn to the first half. (Look, I jump around a lot while programming, so thanks for bearing with me.) How am I going to warm up the crowd, especially assuming I’ll have a lot of beginners?

Getting the Beginners Up to Speed

I have a few go-to opening dances; I specifically like The Appetizer to start because it includes a chain, but not in the context of a chain+star progression². Let’s put that first. For a second dance, I like the idea of practicing promenades and also shoring up chains, and I noticed a variation scribbled on one of my dance cards that I’d like to try out: so let’s roll with my Spring Beauty var., which conveniently saves me from 2x dances in a row that start with N b&s.³

However, I acknowledge this dance as a risk, since zig-zags are a novel figure (though easier than one might think, because of the physical connection—that’s the only reason I’m risking it here), and the transition into a right shoulder ‘round might be rougher than I hope. Let’s put in an alternate in case the crowd doesn’t seem up to this one. For a second dance of the evening that’s beyond a glossary dance but still hard to mess up, I’ll often reach for something connected, balance-y, and low piece count. In practice this often means a Rory O’Moore, petronellas, “Trip To” wavy line of one role in the middle, down-the-hall, etc. I’ll put in one of my petronella dances, I’ll Hold You In My Arms, which I often use for this program niche (which I in fact wrote specifically so that I’d have an alternative to Tica Tica Timing for this specific need).

Oh sigh, I’ll Hold You In My Arms and 20 Below both have larks allemanding by the left. This isn’t a huuuge deal, but I like to give variety in my filler moves; specifically, I try not to put two dances with the same allemande in them back to back. So let’s swap out my petronella dance for a similarly easy petronella dance without a larks’ allemande. I’ll put in Heartbeat Contra (a classic standby for a reason!) here.

(Now we have two dances in a row with “robins by the right”—Appetizer has allemandes, Heartbeat has a right shoulder ‘round. But I don’t like RSR 1.5x anyway unless it’s for specific choreographic reasons (see Angel’s Flight later in this program), so in practice I often change that to “robins cross by the right, swing your partner”. We’ll say this is fine.)

Filling Out the Rest: First Half

At this point, I can start slotting dances in by vibe and see if they work—I can always rejigger if needed. I like to close the half with something balance-y, and Minimum Fuss, Maximum Fun is one of my most accessible box circulate dances (a figure I adore), so let’s put that 6th. The dance before it should contrast in some way; I could go for straight up smooth, but lately I’ve been digging Woven Waves as a novel-but-actually-quite-hard-to-mess-up dance, and it has a nice chunky-groovy feeling from the wavy lines in the center that could contrast well with Minimum Fuss. Let’s put that as the penultimate dance of the half. And I’ve collected a handful of “right hand star > neighbor swing” dances recently that I’d like to try, so we’ll put one of them in here too, say Stars 2 Stars (because down-the-halls are fun and good for newbies, and I don’t have one in my program yet).

Except whoops, Stars 2 Stars and Minimum Fuss both have a chain+star progression. At least they’re not back to back, but I might as well avoid that; I’ll replace Minimum Fuss with Read Between the Lines, another accessible box circulate dance. (And it ends with a partner b&s, always a fun way to end the half!) Thus for the first half, we have:

Filling Out the Rest: Second Half

On to just slotting in stuff in the second half. I know I want to get people out of the minor set a bit, and I’m already slated to start the half with Wrinkled Ribbon (very smooth). I could find a smooth shadow/visit-next-neighbor dance and put it third, with something punchy in between… But so many of my leave-the-minor-set dances are smooth: what if I found a punchy one for a change of pace, and put it second? Hey, I collected Practice Petronella (a lost-and-found diagonal chain dance with petronellas) and haven’t called it yet, so let’s do that.

The third dance in the half is still within the realm of “everyone’s warmed up and I can push the difficulty level”, so I’ll pull a slightly harder dance that I don’t get to call as often—something smooth, to contrast Practice Petronella. Flipping through my smooth dances, Angel’s Flight caught my eye: it’s not actually that tough on paper and uses all glossary moves, but in practice the A part often trips people up,⁴ so it’s a good “reach” dance. If in the moment it’s feeling too dicey to go for Angel’s Flight, I’ll swap it out for, uh, how about Catch a Falling Star? I collected this one at Pinewoods last summer and still haven’t had a chance to call it, and it feels pretty accessible, connected, and hard to mess up.

As for a last dance: I like to close with balances and moving together, and I’ll always end an evening with a partner b&s. (In fact, I wrote a whole blog post about Closing Contras!) Petronellas often work well for a last dance, but we already have two this evening. Rory O’Moore’s are also lots of fun, so let’s do that instead—I feel like I’ve called my go-to Rory closer (Still More O’Moore) a lot lately, so how about Dancing on the Train?

That makes our whole program:

Double-Checking

At this point I’ll go through and double check. I’m mainly looking out for:

1. same-y-ness: e.g., back to back dances with the same start or progression, or with the same role allemanding; two dances next to each other with too similar a vibe; too many of a certain figure in half, etc.
2. difficulty level: if the program as a whole is too easy/hard, if I have too many “reach” dances in a row, where I might need to add alternates just in case.
   1. when picking alternate dances for a given slot in the program, I do my best to match the character of the plan A dance: stompy for stompy, smooth for smooth, etc. Often the easiest way to accomplish this is matching the main figure of the dance, so you’ll see a lot of e.g. pairs of tough/easier petronella dances, or hey dances, etc. in my programs.
3. presence of neighbor swings: I try not to call more than one dance per half without a neighbor swing, because IMO such a big part of contra is dancing with the other folks in your line

My biggest question is, if I get a ton of beginners, how do I get them up to speed? In a situation like that, I’d slow down my lesson to spend more time on swinging/ending in the right spot and set geography/progression, and skip teaching the chain in the lesson; I’d swap my first dance out for something even more glossary, without even a chain; and teach the chain from the floor in my second dance.

My first thought for a mega simple first dance is Airpants, but I don’t want to double up on A1 N b&s, so let’s think further. A becket dance wouldn’t be the worst here, and would in fact save people from having to cross over at the ends—so let’s do Midwest Folklore, a dead simple beginner becket dance. For a second dance to teach the chain, I would use the un-altered Spring Beauty (orig.): this dance has the advantage of a promenade just before the chain, which primes the dancers for the courtesy turn.⁵

I expect Wrinkled Ribbon to be doable with careful teaching, regardless of whether the hall is at. The shadow interaction in Practice Petronella might be rough if the hall is struggling, so let’s add an alternative for that—another petronella dance is the simplest substitution, something easier than Practice Petronella but more interesting than Tica Tica Timing. I like Maliza’s Magical Mystery Motion for this: pretty accessible but the progression is novel and fun.

We already have an alternate for Angel’s Flight; WarmUp will (hopefully!) just be a matter of careful teaching; and our last two dances are pretty doable and don’t need alternates. So that leaves us with the following program:

Annnnd we’ll call this done!

Wait, I Goofed

In an effort to accurately represent my process, I’ll note that as I was flipping through my program pre-sound check, I looked at my first few dances and went “no, Maia, this is stupid”. If I have a ton of beginners and omit the chain from my lesson, part of the reason I’m doing that is so that I can drill set geography, and in particular hammer home improper formation and progression. Starting with a becket dance kind of undoes that emphasis⁶

I decided that if I had a ton of beginners, I would start with The Baby Rose var.—specifically, swapping out the chain + star progression for circle left 3 places, balance the ring and pass through (see discussion of “The Appetizer” above for my feelings on beginners and chain + star progressions). I would then teach a chain from the floor in the second dance; but an un-altered Spring Beauty felt too repetitive with Baby Rose (because both start with a neighbor balance and swing), so I found another good chain intro dance: Spend Some Time Together. Like Spring Beauty, this dance has a promenade just before the chain, making it a really solid chain intro.

If I end up calling Spend Some Time Together, I’ll have two larks’ allemandes in a row between that and 20 Below, but eh, at this point I didn’t really care. If I have enough beginners to justify this, no one will notice or worry about back-to-back larks’ allemandes. With this adjustment, the beginning of my program now looks like this:

But What Did I Actually Call?

I’m reporting back after the dance! Here’s the program I ended up calling, and an explanation of the changes I made on the fly.

I did indeed have a big crop of beginners, and fewer experienced folks than usual to absorb them (damnit, NEFFA!), so I went with my easy start plan: I slowed down the lesson to emphasize ending the swing in the right place, set geography, and progression (including crossing over when out), and omitted the chain. I opened with Easy Baby Rose and taught the chain from the mic (with a demo) in Spend Some Time Together.

The half hey in 20 Below went just fine, and things were going shockingly well as we got rolling, so I decided to go for something a taaad more complicated than Read Between the Lines to end the half with; I subbed in Suzie’s Sendoff, which is another box circulate dance and so similar in vibe, but slightly more interesting. (I realized the end of the first half was pretty wave-heavy⁷ and considered going a different route entirely for the last dance of the half, but announcements were sufficiently long that by the time we got dancing, it didn’t feel like “ugh we just did this,” so I stuck with my original plan.)

After the first dance of the second half, I knew it would be cutting it close to jam in five more dances plus a waltz, so I decided to leave myself some breathing room, and planned for four more dances (totalling 5 in the second half). This meant that I could run all the dances a bit longer and give the dancers and the band time to groove out, and also could take more time teaching the funky bits without feeling pressed for time. Given that two of the dances in this half needed double walkthroughs and substantial teaching (Practice Petronella and WarmUp), and we ended right on time, this was probably the right choice.

I cut Angel’s Flight because I was excited about doing a 4x4. If I had realized how tricky WarmUp was going to be in practice, I might have made a different choice—for a hall unused to 4x4s, a dance that has so many moves in different orientations (up/down vs. across) is particularly tough. But, we managed!

The final program, as I called it:

I was pleased with how this evening went! I think I hit the difficulty level just about right; I was pushing the dancers a bit, but they all ultimately succeeded, and as the evening wound down, they got to stop thinking as hard and just groove out.

I hope this was a helpful (and minimally confusing) look at my programming process—it was certainly fascinating to write it all down. Thanks for reading!