When in doubt, let the band play the tunes they most want to play. This
is especially true for a less experienced band.
Because really, any dance works with any tune (assuming we’re not
talking about some weird crooked dance or tune).
Lisa
Nelson, NH
Lisa Sieverts
603-762-0235
l...@lisasieverts.com
On 19 Mar 2023, at 17:54, Katherine Kitching via Contra Callers wrote:
Hello from Halifax!
I will preface this by saying that I consider myself a relatively
"beginner" caller. I have been working on it for about 15 years now
and I think I've become somewhat proficient at calling a very
beginner-friendly sequence of dances at our monthly beginner-friendly
dances here in Halifax - but that is about the extent of what I do.
And we rarely ever dance anything as involved as a Hey, here :)
One area where I definitely lack skill is communicating to our bands
(we have 4-5 groups who play for us regularly), in a succinct manner
that doesn't ruffle their feathers, about what sort of a tune I want
for each dance.
This task is made more difficult by the fact that I write (or heavily
modify) pretty much all our dances, so I can't look online to find
recommendations or videos of tunes that fit.
As far as I know, I am a polite and caring human who never sets out to
put anyone down or show them that I know better. I try to be humble
about the fact that i'm just learning and doing the best I can. For
example, last month, with apologies, I asked the band if they would
mind quickly going through their planned tunes for the evening, so I
could run through my dance program and try to assign a dance to each
tune.
Because I lack the vocabulary and experience to tell a band "for
this dance, I need a tune with characteristics X and Y" - having them
play the tune one time through (sometimes even just half of it!) is so
far the most effective method i've found to get a tune that works for
each dance. It's also worth mentioning that our bands are not
experienced contra bands - since we are the only contra group they
work with - and most have limited sets to offer us - for example the
last band came with 8 sets of tunes, to match up with the 8 dances I
had planned.... so when I found one or two that weren't an ideal fit
for anything, I did have to work quite hard rearrange things a few
times to slot everything in!
Anyhow it took about 7 minutes to do this, and I thanked them
profusely, and the dance-tune meld went well! I thanked them again
after. But still, the lead musician told me after the event that she
"didn't really appreciate being told which tune to play when" . And
that deflated me for sure :(
Anyhow, I welcome any grains of wisdom on this process generally
(and/or a link if one exists to this amazing cdss online workshop I
took years ago on matching tunes to dances/communicating with
bands)....
but my specific question is this:
A *different* band - the one whose feathers I most often seem to
ruffle haha - has always played a tune set somewhere in the evening,
the past few times they've played for us, that no matter which dance I
called to it, I felt it was always a really bad fit.
I never said anything bad about it, to be clear!! But after a few
dances where it bummed me out every single time, I finally asked the
lead musician via email (as politely as I could, putting all the blame
on myself: "I just can't seem to find a dance that i'm able to call to
this tune, would you mind leaving it out in the future?" ).
I got this response:
"The Queteux Pomerleau set that you are quoting can be removed - the
speed of the dancers never gets up to a level to make that set
effective. They are Quebecois tunes that we learned from Sue, but in
Quebec they are danced to quite fast."
(This refers to Sue Songer who came as part of an amazing week-long
workshop CDSS blessed us with about 8 years ago.)
Anyhow I was curious if anyone knows of this set, and could suggest
some simple contra dances that would go well with it.
I confess I am not a fan of the feel of the tune for the context in
which I call - most of the east-coasty jigs and reels that this band
and our other bands play really get all the dancers cheering and
stomping their feet, and this one never does....
But I want to be open minded about it :)
thanks!
Kat K in Halifax
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