Amplifying Jimmy Akin's suggestions: One online source for easy dances, once you get away from typical contras, is "A Barn Dance Repertoire".
https://barndances.org.uk/difficulty.php (The things ranked as difficulty 1 are in general pretty easy, though some of them are really not contra-like.) What you have to balance here is how much you're committed to contra formation and how much you're committed to early dancer success. If you have room in the hall, Sicilian Circle formation removes the confusion of turning around at the ends - you just keep going around the ring. Barn dances usually have swings that end where they started, rather than relying on them to be progressive, so you don't have the fragility of swings ending up in the wrong place (and sometimes you're not opposite your partner any longer, etc). Some of them don't even have swings. Modern contra is pretty challenging to bootstrap. It works fairly well for integrating newcomers into an existing crowd if the experienced dancers make a point of dancing with new dancers and if the callers don't throw in a lot of "lose your partner - find your partner" dances. If your experienced dancers will tolerate it you can build up through whole-set (what Joe's calling "single minor") to get them used to listening to the music and dancing to the phrase, Sicilian circles ("Haste to the Wedding" is great, and you can have a short short partner swing that ends where it started; "Solidier's Joy" has a chain that's a struggle with 100% new dancers but should go smoothly with 50% new), and then graduate to duple minor longways once the new dancers have built up some competence. (That's a different use of barn dances than having a party for non dancers where you can't expect anybody learned anything from the last dance and where you can pretty much do anything you can put across becasue the dancers have no expectation - squares, 3-couple sets, etc. To do it this way you have to have pedagogical reasons for your choices and fewer things that are just fun but don't lead anywhere.) You're likelier to retain your experienced dancers thorugh unchallenging Sicilians, etc, if you can get things moving efficiently and have a high proportion of dancing. Hee's an easy dance I wrote that makes a pretty good second dance with a lot of beginners. It does have two swings and you do have to end up on the right side in the swing but there's a while to sort that out. It's a pretty good one for group consciousness to emerge: CLAIRE'S REQUEST Alan Winston 11/17/2017 Form:IC Fig:NB&S;OvalL&R;BTR,PS;Prom,WC: A1: Neighbor balance and swing A2: (Take hands, all around the set to make a big oval.). Turn the oval left and right. B1: 1-2: (With hands, balance ring in original foursome (keep the hand you've got with neighbor and take the free hand with your partner) 3-8: Ravens/ladies draw Partners to their side for a swing. B2: 1-4: Partners promenade to gents/larks side 5-8: Ladies/Ravens chain to current neighbor, look for new neighbor -- Alan _______________________________________________ Contra Callers mailing list -- contracallers@lists.sharedweight.net To unsubscribe send an email to contracallers-le...@lists.sharedweight.net
