Hi Rickey and others,
I use Sherry's Family Contra often in settings with lots of kids and/or adults
with little contra experience. It is a legitimate, bona fide contra dance, and
for that audience is probably the most failsafe contra I have in my repertoire.
Indeed, I taught it just this week for a class of 8 & 9 year olds at a dance
camp, a class that included several kids who were not enthusiastic dancers. They
all did just fine. Barb Kirchner posted the dance a year ago on the
trad-dance-callers list:
Family Contra (Sherry Nevins)
A1 Balance ring 2x, circle left 1x
("Go IN... and OUT... and IN... and OUT)
A2 Balance ring 2x, circle right 1x
B1 DSD with neighbor, DSD with partner
B2 DSD 1.5 as a couple
This isn't a dance to call for the hard charging aerobic contra crowd-- as you
can see, there's no swings in it (gasp!) and yes, Rickey, you're right, they'll
plow right through that final figure and would want to do something more. But in
its family setting, it can indeed take kids and their parents a full 16 counts
to negotiate the figure.
David Millstone
